Eunice Sanchez
Sa Ilog, Nagtatagpo (On Rivers, Gathering)
West Gallery, Manila

Like water, grief seeps into everything. It trickles through cracks. It gathers speed and rushes in. Filipina artist Eunice Sanchez found herself amid pools of sorrow in her second solo exhibition, “Sa Ilog, Nagtatagpo (On Rivers, Gathering)” at West Gallery. Following in her hometown’s tradition of going down the river after a funeral to wash away one’s sorrow, Sanchez comes to terms with loss through cyanotype photograms of moving water, wintering trees, and fading images of loved ones. Steeped in a blue hue, these small prints on paper, put together in assemblages, create a ghostly sense of stillness against the shattering tragedy of death.

More than lamentation, the impulse to make art out of loss is often the desire to concretize one’s absence. In Permutations I & II (2023), Sanchez gives shape to the formless emotion as she deconstructs the Bauang River into multiple cyanotype prints. The artist documented the river’s surface in its various motions, capturing the river in a photographic instant. Each image is then organized in a grid, arranged as if a study of noting changes in the water’s texture to see what has emerged from the depths.