How does one apprehend the imminence of catastrophe? In his first solo online release with Cartellino, Daniel Uychoco conjures fantastical landscapes in response to a milieu of incessant crisis. He reestablishes his painterly worldbuilding, first introduced in his inaugural solo exhibition last year, in a perpetual state of anticipation—situating it between surrender and survival amid the certainty of upheaval.
Uychoco takes ‘duyog,’ a Filipino word which roughly translates to ‘eclipse,’ as the climactic point of his narrative. In the present series, the moon-eating dragon known in Philippine mythology as ‘bakunawa’ devours the sun instead. Contrary to the conventional account of the tale, the artist renders the eclipse in his storyline as irreversible and consequently engenders a darkness that is never-ending.
The artist shares that the collection originates from “a time when headlines, personal struggles, and social tensions all seemed to overlap.” Albeit dreamlike, the tales he renders emerge from facts of societal atrocities: genocide, environmental plunder, and injustices committed one after another.
Yet while his works take off from thematic and stylistic atmospheres of powerlessness, Uychoco explains that they reside in moments of “restrained breath.” In turning points and split-seconds before tragedy unfolds, he locates stories of survival not in grand gestures of heroism, but in “quiet acts of care.” He takes us through a mythical adventure—where we keep the darkness at bay despite an eclipse.
