Man In Suit, 2009
To mock our perceptions of success, Martha Atienza’s Man in Suit (2008), one of the works included in Constructions of Truths, MCAD’s current exhibition, features several men from Bantayan Island, Cebu, and the train tracks in Manila going about their daily routines dressed in a black suit. We see a man pushing a cart on a train track, a man making bread, a man paddling his boat in the open sea. A suit is symbolic of someone who has a white-collar job, the distinction of going to an office, and not working with their hands. Atienza features men whose occupations are defined by physical labour. Asking them to wear suits while they perform their work presents a paradoxical image. Atienza presents us with a group of men who take pride in their work but places them in a suit, presenting us with a superfluous symbol of importance in the world. The video highlights jobs that we take for granted, but continue to exist in their purest form of labour, and exposes the ridiculousness of a suit and its symbolic power within this context.
Man in Suit (2008) is its own social reading of today’s society encouraging viewers to rethink the image. What does a suit mean in what context? How is power and success represented in various spaces of society?
Atienza, too, is enamored of the people of Bantayan, their lives, and their stories. The artist, who grew up in the Netherlands to a Dutch mother and Filipino father, presents images informed by her cross-cultural experiences and observations.
The Artist
Martha Atienza’s (b.1981, Philippines) practice explores installation and video as a way of documenting and questioning issues around environment, community, and development. Her work is mostly constructed in video, mostly sociological in nature that studies her direct environment. Often utilizing technology in the form of mechanical systems, Atienza’s current work explores the immersive capacity of installation in generating critical discourse. Her work tends to be collaborative in nature, working with people from different backgrounds and expertise as well as the residents of Bantayan Island, where her family is from, and whose narratives are intricately woven into issues such as environmental change, displacement, cultural loss, governance, and socio-economic disparities.
The variety brought about by her collaborative art process is something unique to Atienza who was born in Manila,Philippines to a Dutch mother and Filipino father. Her art practice amalgamates disparate elements to form a cohesive original, nfluenced by her constant travelbetween the Philippines and the Netherlands. Atienza received her BFA from the Academy of Visual Arts and Design in The Netherlands, 2006, and participated in an art program at the Kuvataideakatemia in Helsinki, Finland, 2005. Her work has been exhibited internationally. . She has received numerous recognitions and grants such as the Baloise Art Prize in Art Basel (Switzerland) for her work, Our Islands 11°16’58.4_N 123°45’07.0_E (2017); the Thirteen Artists Award by the Cultural Center of the Philippines (2015); the Ateneo Arts Award with studio Residency Grants in Liverpool, Melbourne, New York and Singapore (2016 and 2012), and the Mercedes Zobel/Outset Residency at Gasworks in London (2016).
Constructions of Truths is presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila in partnership with the Han Nefkens Foundation and in collaboration with Edouard Malingue Gallery, Kurimanzutto, Ruya Foundation and Silverlens.
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Read about the exhibition here.
Artwork: Martha Atienza, Man in Suit, 2008
Courtesy of the artist and Silverlens
Source: https://www.silverlensgalleries.com/artists/martha-atienza
Artist’s image courtesy of: www.jljavier.com
