Becoming DecolonialThe Living Journal of IJWBAA
PHASE III: MEMORY AS MATERIAL
We Remember in Color“I began to see memory not just as content, but as a material. I wasn’t just painting what I remembered — I was painting with memory itself.” - pao
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The Wall is two figures stand side by side yet divided by a stark white wall, embodying the quiet tension of shared origins fractured by unspoken distance.
The First Scar I Ever DrewJuly 2023
I remember the exact brushstroke. It wasn’t a line — it was a scar.By mid-2023, my work began leaning inward. I wasn’t just reacting to the outside world. I was resurfacing what I’d buried — grief, childhood, silence, the textures of rural Pangasinan.My art became a kind of séance. I wasn’t illustrating memory. I was materializing it.There were no literal forms, but the feelings were crystal clear: the heat of my lola’s stories, the dissonance of speaking English in a Filipino mind, the wounds that had no English word.Scar became shape. Silence became pattern. And suddenly, I wasn’t painting with pixels anymore — I was painting with memory itself.
I remember the exact brushstroke. It wasn’t a line — it was a scar.By mid-2023, my work began leaning inward. I wasn’t just reacting to the outside world. I was resurfacing what I’d buried — grief, childhood, silence, the textures of rural Pangasinan.My art became a kind of séance. I wasn’t illustrating memory. I was materializing it.There were no literal forms, but the feelings were crystal clear: the heat of my lola’s stories, the dissonance of speaking English in a Filipino mind, the wounds that had no English word.Scar became shape. Silence became pattern. And suddenly, I wasn’t painting with pixels anymore — I was painting with memory itself.
“Wong Family” by IJWBAA is a minimalist digital portrait that uses bold geometric forms and a vibrant color palette to celebrate familial unity, identity, and emotional connection through abstraction.
Why I Couldn’t Paint Like the OthersDecember 5, 2022
By December, I still felt like an outsider. No art school. No local collective. No landscapes, portraits, or “pretty” subjects.While my peers created work that looked comfortably “artistic,” mine resembled glitches, maps of emotion, and things trying desperately to heal themselves.I used to see that as a shortcoming. Now I recognize it as freedom. In my world, there were no gatekeepers to tell me what belonged on the canvas. So I did whatever I needed to do.My approach—minimal yet loud, untrained yet sincere—was never a lack of culture. It was a reclamation of one. I was unlearning every rule I’d ever absorbed and forging a new path forward.
By December, I still felt like an outsider. No art school. No local collective. No landscapes, portraits, or “pretty” subjects.While my peers created work that looked comfortably “artistic,” mine resembled glitches, maps of emotion, and things trying desperately to heal themselves.I used to see that as a shortcoming. Now I recognize it as freedom. In my world, there were no gatekeepers to tell me what belonged on the canvas. So I did whatever I needed to do.My approach—minimal yet loud, untrained yet sincere—was never a lack of culture. It was a reclamation of one. I was unlearning every rule I’d ever absorbed and forging a new path forward.
Magkasintahan are Aeta lovers which are Indigenous people of the Philippines, known for their deep ancestral connection to the land, resilience, and rich cultural traditions that have endured despite centuries of colonization.
Naming What Was TakenNovember 2023
This phase wasn’t always beautiful. It was grieving. Naming.I started confronting what colonization took from us — not just land, but ways of feeling, of knowing.I found myself creating works that looked like maps, but with missing places. Like poems with redacted verses.I wasn’t just remembering. I was pointing. Saying: Look what they tried to erase.Decolonization, for me, wasn’t a theory. It was a process of creative mourning. A way of building a language from the pieces that remained.These works were messy, layered, contradictory. Just like history.But this was the moment I knew: something was forming. Not Western. Not nostalgic. Something new.
This phase wasn’t always beautiful. It was grieving. Naming.I started confronting what colonization took from us — not just land, but ways of feeling, of knowing.I found myself creating works that looked like maps, but with missing places. Like poems with redacted verses.I wasn’t just remembering. I was pointing. Saying: Look what they tried to erase.Decolonization, for me, wasn’t a theory. It was a process of creative mourning. A way of building a language from the pieces that remained.These works were messy, layered, contradictory. Just like history.But this was the moment I knew: something was forming. Not Western. Not nostalgic. Something new.
Continue reading Phase 4: Decolonial Minimalism
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