Bembol dela Cruz

Bembol de la Cruz presents human figures imprinted with articulate forms and symbols: tattoo. Their bodies against a background of dissolved shadows, they are uninhibited in revealing their marks-ethnic symbols, typographical flourishes, the Sacred Heart-whose significance lies in as much as their emergence from pain as their evocation of personal histories. 

The artist, by approximating the tattooed bodies, inflects stasis and attention to this artform whose appeal and unique characteristic is that it is carved on living and moving flesh. The tattoo’s indelibility is, in itself, an ironic statement: the inks and marks will outlive the skin, but only for a certain time, as the tattoo is consumed by mortality just like the rest of the body. 

“Indelible,” curated by Roberto Chabet, is as much representation as document after the fact. It venerates tattoo as a valid form of art whose beauty lies precisely on being rendered on a corruptible canvas, contextualizing it in the broader scope of image-making: the assortment of meaning-infused marks with which we ink our passage through life. (from notes from his exhibit “Indelible” at Finale)

B. June 1976 , Manila, Philippines

Ateneo arts awardee