Moreen Austria’s first exhibition with Qube Gallery reflects on parallel notions. She presents works produced in the middle of the pandemic where restrictions in mobilizations and physical interactions were in place.
Ordinary Happiness
In his 1942 essay, the French Philosopher Albert Camus had attempted to explain the “inevitability of happiness.” Comparing the situation of Sisyphus to the absurdity of human life, Camus explained that reconciling with the futility of our living tasks, one can reach a state of acceptance for which he says: “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Moreen Austria’s first exhibition with Qube Gallery reflects on parallel notions. She presents works produced in the middle of the pandemic where restrictions in mobilizations and physical interactions were in place.
Austria’s paintings and terracotta sculptures engage the audience in an experience that seizes the present, a place where people live in harmony and tranquillity. The pandemic brought certain disruptions to our daily lives and made the artist look into her immediate environment to ponder on her journey to pursue art and, perhaps, happiness. After a long career in the pharmaceutical field, Austria had decided to produce representations of people and places that define ordinary life and the banality that encompasses it.
To borrow again from Camus, “But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?” Here, the artist introduces works that are charged with nostalgia, remembering and longing for a time that allows us to breathe and relish on the simplest possibilities --- be in the company of the people we love and be surrounded by nature.
While working during the lockdown, Austria remembers an anthill that had suddenly appeared near her studio’s compound. Intrigued by the way the ant colonies had built the mound to organize their life cycle, Austria decided to use terracotta to make sculptures shaped like life forms. The artist’s unfamiliarity with the material and the forced hiatus of social life brought by the pandemic had allowed Austria to understand every aspect of working with clay. From hand-building to firing, these moments became meditative practices and were instrumental for Austria to recognize the different sources of her contentment: family, art, friends, and the arts community in Negros. These realizations and discoveries influenced how the artist worked on this exhibition; here is an ode to a life fulfilled by accepting all that we have and all that we ever could be. Austria’s “Ordinary Happiness” takes us to this process of reconciliation, one where we allow ourselves and others to be free, no matter what the consequences are.
About the artist
Moreen Austria lives and works in Negros. Her practice looks at every opportunity of recording the details of life and how it reaches its fulfillment. Austria works primarily with sculptures and extends her approach to painting and installations. She was featured in exhibitions at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Orange Gallery, Tanadika Kapitana Gallery, and received the Grand Prize at the Metrobank Art and Design Excellence competition in 2017 for her sculptural work, “Pagtaguyod.”
