Becoming Us: The Self as Mosaics
Through the use of faceless figures in playful moments, Martie Datu recreates the wistful scenes of our childhood.
Words Donavil Angeles
Photos courtesy of Martie Datu
November 15, 2025
“What remains of childhood once we are grown?”
In Martie Datu’s fifth solo exhibition, ‘Becoming Us,’ viewers step back into a memory they once inhabited–in the form of our little selves, navigating the world with such innocence and dreamlike wonder.
Opening at the ArtistSpace in the Ayala Museum Annex, Greenbelt Park, Makati, this deeply personal yet universally resonant exhibit prompts an exploration into the timeless dance between our current identity and the childhood that ultimately shaped, and continues to shape it–into “becoming us.”
An Echo of Beginnings
In moments of adulthood, we often neglect the importance of simply breathing so unlike the world we once occupied in our childhood, where the wondrous space we lived in did not demand so much from us.
Perhaps our unfading promise to ourselves is our pledge to keep the child inside us alive, amid all the world’s chaos.
“Becoming Us is a return to childhood’s quiet traces—full of presence, fragile yet enduring,” Martie Datu wrote, delineating how the fragments of our childhood linger, even in our adult selves. Our childhood never fades: it merely transforms into who we are today, serving as the echoes of our starting point.
Through a series of paintings that depict children in the fleeting moments of playing and silence, occupying the canvas with their youthful astonishment at life, Datu draws these figures in a nostalgic manner, transporting us back into the gentleness of our childhood.
Rendered with a faceless presence, Datu’s paintings transcend the personal. These child figures serve as vessels of universality: bearing no faces, yet simultaneously mirroring back the reflections of their audience.
Thus, her work invites the viewer and the painter alike to an intimate dialogue with art, and encourages us to project our own childhood memories and stories onto the canvas.
In this manner, we grapple with the fragments of our identity, reflecting on the stories from our childhood that remain with us–molding us into who we are; an everlasting testament to the idea that despite it all, we are all mosaics of every single experience in our lives.
“This collection is deeply personal, but also an invitation: to see, to feel, and to remember the pieces of childhood that still shape who we are.”
Martie Datu is set to host an Artist Reception on November 7 at 5 PM. Meanwhile, the exhibition will continue to run from November 4 to 18 from 11 AM to 8 PM. Admission is free for all visitors.
