Ryan Villamael

Ryan Villamael uses the precision handiwork of paper cutting—a traditional Philippine art form called pabalat—to create intricate sculptures and installations whose conceptual complexity challenges traditionally limited understandings of craft. The fundamentally fragile nature of paper, its vulnerability to exposure to sun and moisture, stands in contrast to its central role as the matter upon which epics, political tracts, poetry, legal decrees, and trade ledgers have been recorded over centuries. In the alternative cartographies generated by Villamael’s works, sometimes by means of the literal deconstruction of historical maps and books, the absent spaces created by cuts suggest the ruptures, false routes, and miscalculations of colonial conquest as much as a more subjective grappling with sense of place and belonging. Informed by his father’s background as an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW), the works are part of his examination into the history of the Philippines and the migrations of its peoples for work abroad, particularly in the seafaring trade. This dissecting of defined routes and borders and the porosity given to the maps through their transformation into sculpture shatter and reconfigure place into a new continuum. Villamael’s large-scale works suspended from the ceiling, such as Locus Amoenus (2017–), appear almost as airborne foliage and seem to burst forth with the uncontrolled excess of nature, bringing to mind algal blooms or underground mycelial networks. Their positioning makes a classical ‘reading’ of the dismantled contents impossible, yet their physical presence and delicate beauty convey the distance between geopolitical realities and their very real, sometimes unexpected, impact on the arc of individuals’ lives.

Co-produced by Ryan Villamael and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), 2024–25

Work in the exhibition: Locus Amoenus (2017–), replica maps, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Silverlens (Manila/New York)