Issay Rodriguez
Issay Rodriguez (b. 1991, Philippines) obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, and was awarded the Outstanding Thesis Award upon graduation in 2013. She has studied as an exchange scholar at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Aside from exhibiting in Paris and various Asian cities, Rodriguez has shown work at Viva Arte Viva at the Central Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Throughout 2018, she conducted an artist residency with Bellas Artes Projects in Bataan, Philippines which strongly influenced her practice today around honey bees and its social, ethological, and spiritual implications.
Rodriguez’s artworks range from drawings, prints, objects, installations, and videos. Her work attempts to connect gaps and fragments of thought, memory and feelings through research- oriented and community-based investigations. This mode of working questions lived experience against image and object production. In this age of the instantaneous, Rodriguez configures sensory participation to give new forms of optical delight in a distressed, flat world.
Rodriguez’s artworks range from drawings, prints, objects, installations, and videos. Her work attempts to connect gaps and fragments of thought, memory and feelings through research- oriented and community-based investigations. This mode of working questions lived experience against image and object production. In this age of the instantaneous, Rodriguez configures sensory participation to give new forms of optical delight in a distressed, flat world.
Issay Rodriguez, capture from her virtual-reality work "Doon", 2020
Through 2018, artist Issay Rodriguez conducted a local artist residency with Bellas Artes Projects in Bataan, Philippines, which strongly influenced her practice around honey bees and its social, ethological, and spiritual implications. This inspired Doon ("over there" in Filipino), where she explores the possibility of augmented and virtual reality in art production to promote a new medium for an aesthetic experience. By interpreting Rudolf Steiner’s Hegaxonal Force (Dornach lectures, 1923), where beehives are described as having a life process that mirrors the human brain, viewers are thus immersed in a beehive. Presented with art/n23 for the first time in Art Fair Philippines, a high number of visitor traffic was accommodated at the art/n23 Incubator Booth.
Rodriguez’s portfolio of artworks allude to multiple tactile forms that contrast with life’s daily dose of technology mixed with the burgeoning post-human. The heart of her work stems from connecting gaps and fragments of thought, memory and feelings through inward investigations that allow her to think about one’s lived experience in image and object production. She imbeds narratives extracted from archival research as well as non-digital human interactions. Rodriguez works towards new configurations in the form of tactile and sensory, at times participatory, art projects in this age of fascination for the instantaneous but distressing world filled with optical pleasure.
