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Guhit Sa Puso
exhibition notes
2024
Presenting his drawings in a solo exhibition for the first time, Raffy T. Napay looks inward. Entitled Guhit sa Puso, the show is a collection of drawings by the artist, created in his moments of rest and contemplation.
Never intended initially to be viewed by the public, Napay’s drawings represent where the artist resides, at the heart of it, so to speak. The drawings are part-journal and part-overflow of his main artistic medium: large tapestries, woven and embroidered, often spanning entire spaces and making monumental something that is often ushered to the side (and derisively) as craft.
Napay learned how to manipulate textiles and create with fabric and thread from his mother. This intergenerational form of expression lies close to the fabric of his person and practice, though he has found freedom and release in drawing. For him, drawing is the purest form of expression: “unang lapag sa sarili mo.”
Many of these drawings were made after a long day of working when, even fatigued, the compulsion to create doesn’t leave him. These drawings are his respite, a daily routine of free expression with no deliberate or prescribed outcome. Etched into these drawings are his thoughts and feelings, freely flowing. When he is drawing, he feels relaxed, calm, at rest. Even still, the making pours forth.
For Napay, the title, Guhit sa Puso, has two meanings: one, referring to the visible line of the mark made, the other, referring to veins or lines to the heart. His daily routine of drawing remains a deeply private act for Napay, but one that he is excited to share with others, in anticipation of reactions to his making something beyond what others expect from him.
Although these two processes can seem wildly different from each other, Napay has found similarities, too. For him, each informs the other, where the final image is a product of a step-by-step layering, obscuring, and so on. These marks are like lines on a map, pointing towards a direction and moving along a path. Each step is a mark that adds onto the marks that were left before.
Here, the end point is the drawing rather than it being iterated onto a canvas or textile work; each exists as a final piece rather than as a study to be reworked, improved upon, or scaled up.
Thematically, Napay is drawn to portraying familial relationships and histories, fostered from a closeness with his parents and his own fatherhood, and personal ruminations of life and history. Through his work, one surmises that Napay perceives life as cyclical, where many of his figures exist as stand-ins for life itself: its robustness, joy, sorrow, end, and birth. Despite the confusion and hardships, there is a celebration always present in his work: “Minsan sobrang liwanag.”
“Gintong Sanga” represents our life and those of our parents, as well as those that came before them. The tree, ever alive, builds on and is a continuation of what has come before. The sturdy trunks are our ancestors — in their golden age — whereas we are the new growth and leaves: “Bagong sibol,” Napay says. “Tayo ang uusbong.”
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