213.4 x 182.9 cm
moniquemeloche is pleased to present The Answer is the Waves of the Sea, an exhibition of new paintings by Maia Cruz Palileo. This is her second solo show with the gallery.
Informed by her family’s Filipino heritage, Palileo investigates the malleable language of painting, offering a panoramic lens through which to investigate the larger questions pertaining to forgotten histories and how best to honor these stories in perpetuity.
Divesting from the confines of a linear narrative, Palileo seeks to resurrect and memorialize the legacy of invisible histories, creating a reflective space to consider the potentials achieved when we invest in our ancestral inheritances. Through gestural layers Palileo collapses time and space, visually dissolving the borders between past and present, offering the emblematic ability to stand alongside her elders within one endless picture plane.
The complex linework of her lush fauna serves as a compositional mechanism through which the eye can traverse the circular paths of each canvas; there is no start, no stop, just continuous progression of breath and life, unfettered by the confines of temporality. Further investigation into the dense layers of foliage reveals mysterious figures shrouded by overgrowth and shadow. Each disappearing form echoes the selective means through which history is presented, a nod to colonization’s conscious erasure of lineages and records less suited to the more dominant narrative. This disregard for an absolute history has allowed for cerebral weeds to overtake and whitewash the landscape of the past, disappearing the rich truths that also inform our present and future.
As a remedy for this disparity, Palileo considers the universal energies that move throughout all living entities; the ontology of a harmonious existence rooted not in domination or extraction, but in a conscious and symbiotic connection to the land we inhabit. In opposition to the ambulatory and destructive nature of imperialism, she presents a reminder of the rich and diverse archive of stories saturated within the land we inhabit; a visual account through which she can interlace the visible and invisible, exploring the many possibilities of past lives both remembered and forgotten.
