GedAze Projects: Strings of Engagement
Words Portia Placino
August 22, 2024
Installation view of Portals. Photo by Albert Labrador and Maximo Siojo.
Ged Merino and Aze Ong’s collaborations are rooted in contemporary moments of thread and fabric. Individually, they create compelling work using textiles – together they immerse in each other’s approaches – weaving together a tapestry of their personal stories and responding to Merino’s frenetic energy and Ong’s serenity.
Merino spent many years in the United States, now dividing his time between Colombia, United States, and the Philippines. His experience and works traverse the narratives of textiles, migration, identity, and continuing experimentations. Ong, on the other hand, is Manila-based, despite many exhibitions and residencies abroad—including the prestigious Asian Cultural Council grant. Her works are deeply embedded in personal experiences, contemplative practices, and pushing the boundaries of art—breaking through the patterns and expectations of traditional crochet. Merino and Ong’s materiality provides potent ground for experimentation, despite the drastic differences in the energy and transitions of the objects and materials they were working with.
Ged Marino and Aze Ong of the GedAze Project
One of the earliest iterations of their fiery collaborations was Sound in Our Head where Ong interacted with Merino’s Transitional Objects at The Drawing Room Contemporary Art Project Space in 2016. Sound in My Head started as Ong struggled with tinnitus—a perception of sound without an external source. The difficult experience pushed Ong to create the initial works for the initial contact between the two, creating Sound in Our Head. This was closely followed by their collaborative participation at the London Biennale Manila Pollination in Metropolitan Theatre and the Sound in Our Head edition for Bliss on Bliss Art Projects in New York City. The early projects revealed Ong’s partiality to spirituality and contemplative approaches to her method contrasting with Merino’s approach to the divine through a louder manipulation of scraps into soft sculptures. Their incongruity collided, giving texture to the diversity of their approaches in their practice.
2017 was a potent continuation of the collaborative projects as they engaged commercial, institutional, alternative, and global spaces. The wall-bound Illuminati project presented by The Drawing Room Contemporary Art for Art Fair Philippines was one of the strongest collaborative pieces of the two—unexpected in a mostly commercial setting. The majestic spread of Ong’s crochet as Merino intervened with his soft sculpture was captivating. Much promise was felt in the singular piece. Prelude at TDR Escolta was a precursor to the larger project Existence at the UP Vargas Museum. Their experimentation and interventions on each other’s divergent approaches continued.
Installation progress of Portals by Ged Merino and Aze Ong, on-view at the Ignacio B. Ginemez Amphitheatre, Arete. Photos by Clefvan Pornela. Courtesy of Ateneo Art Gallery, Ateneo de Manila University. Additional photos by Albert Labrador and Maximo Siojo.
Patrick Flores described this stage of their collaboration through the exhibition note, “For now, there is a lot of whimsy involved in the exercise, and expectedly so to the extent that this is largely an experiment and perhaps destined to be of an ongoing sort. In such a situation, the artists express the desire to reach out to viewers, catching their attention through the robust appearance of the art and the manner by which it is installed. It hangs, it sprawls, it amasses.” Flores further contemplated the possibilities of the collaboration, “What might be a challenge in the future for the artists is a further conversion of the very economy of the material as it relates to the very economy of their aesthetic attitude towards it. We anticipate that stage in their relationship with the medium that the worldliness of the cloth transfigures into performative gestures of that world itself: how it has come to be, what is wrong with it, and why it should, like the cloth in their deft hands, change.” Merino and Ong also took their project to Topaz Art in New York City with Open Threads—further exploring the extent of their exchange.
The peak of Merino and Ong’s collaboration unfolded in 2019—specifically in their Imaginarium Into the Space of Time at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and Kanlungan at the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). They brought their partnership to New York City once again for Stitching Boundaries at the Yant Art Space and Bliss on Bliss Art Projects. Imaginarium at SAM was a massive and immersive install, drawing in the viewers to look, imagine, and play. The complex and intensive works created a universe for the audience to engage with. At turns crowded, the whimsical attempt to engage wins in captivating viewers. Similarly, Kanlungan attempts the same immersive installation in a smaller, more intimate space. Despite the grandeur of the projects, this was also a stopping point as the pair paused their collaboration in 2020 due to the global pandemic, at the same time revealing the desire for the pair to explore their individual growths.
It would take almost five years before Merino and Ong attempted another collaborative work, resulting in Portals, their first outdoor, large-scale art project at the Ateneo Art Gallery. Initial studies at the JCB Gallery of Philippine Women’s University prompted a workshop approach to their collaborative project—inviting students from kindergarten to college, expanding toward professors, administrative staff, and artists-participants from outside the university community. Participants are prompted to look into the present, and process thoughts and feelings through fabric, thread, yarn, and various scrap textile materials Merino brought home from the United States, as well as gifts from friends, factory discards, and collected objects of interest. Through the weeks, workshop participants created abstract responses and figurative forms from personal stories. With a giant rat falling from the ceiling, a handbag, a jacket, hearts, flowers, cats around the university, an elephant stuffy from a niece, and a still life painting—printed and rendered in fabric.
The stories are of present and lived memories—childhood and adulthood. There is love, joy, heartbreak, frustrations—experimental creative expressions. Merino intervenes and ties together the components and studies, and puts them together, weaving a narrative responding to the stories and shared moments. Ong – through crochet, further ties together the stories – through spontaneity and control—pulling, tying, and knotting. The flow of energy is directed organically, presented for the viewer to interact with—ideally while lying down on the floor, observing the details, with flows and imperfections.
Experimenting inside the small gallery inside PWU is incubating a new approach targeted for Portals at the Ateneo Art Gallery’s outdoor lawn where the installation was meant to frame the skies above. Though the prompt of the PWU iteration is to respond to present society and conditions, the next is for the viewer to view upwards and onwards – through blue or cloudy skies, and rain and wind – perhaps even typhoons. The remnants of the ephemera are still unknown.
The current iteration at the Ateneo Art Gallery is experimental—with a degree of unpredictability and roughness expected in participatory works. The scale, at times, struggles with the vastness of the space—the trees and a gigantic building overwhelm the installation at certain moments. Viewed intimately, as the audience walks closer, is a different story. There is wonder at each stitch—for the participants, it became akin to a game of finding where their contributions ended up, and for new viewers, a question of how and why each element is there.
The Portals installation is magical at sunset and nighttime. When the sky turns into yellows, oranges, and pinks—Portals transform, as if given more potency and life through the heavens, the colors and patterns colliding. After the sun sets, the museum opens the lights, giving an eerie fairyland-like feel to the installation, as if inviting the viewers in to explore the other-worldly. Merino’s approach is often frantic and feverish—felt in the highly detailed and busy cloth patterns demanding attention from his viewers. While Ong’s is quieter, with mesmerizing patterns inviting exploration. The combination of their works takes the audience on a journey of pulsating energies.
With Portals opening up to the heavens and inviting more participation through crochet—it is a wonder where the artworks and the GedAze Projects collaborations would explore next. The potential remains, yet the hope for a fluid coalescence of the two styles and approaches is still palpable. The whimsy, play, and unpredictability lend well to a continuous work-in-progress approach to the collaborations—there is still something missing, it is a comma rather than a period. Will their contrasting energies combine? Or perhaps remain in flux, constantly moving, evolving, and at times colliding.
Detail shot of Portals by Ged Merino and Aze Ong, on-view at the Ignacio B. Gimenez Amphitheatre, Arete. Photo by Clefvan Pornela. Courtesy of Ateneo Art Gallery, Ateneo de Manila University.
Cloth and textiles are facing emerging recognition—a long-overdue regard from the art world. Though artists, including Merino and Ong, have been exploring and breaking ground, the global stage is finally ready for material experimentation, a tempest brewing for decades, if not centuries. The excitement is palpable, and perhaps Portals is but a beginning. The Ateneo Art Gallery’s open ground is waiting—for the audience to engage, the rain to fall, the storms to come, the typhoons to challenge, and the ephemera to reveal itself after the elements are done.
