Quiet Monuments: Maria Taniguchi

Art

Words Portia Placino 
Photos Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in De La Salle
May 6, 2025

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This is an excerpt from Art+ Magazine March-April 2025 issue

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Monumental and quiet comes to mind with Maria Taniguchi’s ‘body of work.’ Exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in De La Salle - College of St. Benilde, around the constant noise and chaos of Manila City–Taniguchi’s retrospective feels like a quiet in the storm. At the same time, it is demanding. Though it is possible to scan the exhibition quickly, much like how people scan images and content on phones and computers or even exhibitions and biennales, it would completely miss the point. The exhibition demands contemplation, a long pause from the daily ritual of life. 

Conceptual art isn’t something easy to “get” or understand. Despite several biennales and exhibitions Taniguchi was featured in, the visual overload from such events is counter-intuitive in engaging with her practice. Finding an entry point in conceptual art, much more a deeply felt experience is oftentimes a challenge. On the surface, ‘here is a black painting, do with it what you will,’ is the thought that might come to mind at an initial glance, especially, if the viewer will move on to the next piece. But in the scale of ‘body of work,’ it is one Untitled painting after the other–large and overbearing. It doesn’t just urge, but rather, demands a pause–to see the detail, lines, and color–then a longer stop to think of the possibilities of the experience. 

Getting into the details of what is essentially, piece after piece of Untitled works forces the viewer to really look. There is no definitive title to serve as a clue to the meaning or intention. It is unapologetically there, larger than life and looming. It is for the viewer to engage in, contemplate, like or dislike, even when understanding remains elusive. The series is often referred to as ‘brick works’ referencing the shapes embedded within. Unlike previous exhibitions, Taniguchi included Untitled (2024), a brick work piece without the gray layer, revealing more fully her process–her laborious drawings and colors open to inspection, without the resting of the eyes necessary to see details in the majority of the pieces in the series. 

Conversations on labor, though long belated, are now getting louder in the art world. Artists, creatives, curators, critics, academics, cultural workers, and practically everyone in the art world can attest to the problem of artistic and creative labor at the local and global levels. In finally revealing Taniguchi’s process, the intensity of each piece, line, and stroke embedded in what is at a glance black painting admits to the real work necessary to produce each piece. It is not painting a canvas black but rather taking painstaking, detail-oriented techniques to challenge the viewer to really look at what they are seeing. It is not black–but grays, purples, even reds–with detailed lines for each canvas. The experience, the quiet, and the pause are part of the meaning-making of each piece–and it takes time, complexity, and ultimately muscle memory to produce a work that creates such an experience. 

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