QUO VADIS?

Where are you going?

An individual’s finite nature makes incumbent such concerns as time and space. GPS, Google Maps, Foursquare, Latitude, and other such location-detection applications only serve to highlight such preoccupation with location, and concomitantly, direction. Quo vadis? interrogates and explores these issues, and layers it with existential inquiries and notions of the supernatural, informed by the narrative of Christian Catholic faith. Location, here, transcends the physical material world, and reaches out into the realm of the spiritual. The question—where are you going?– prompts a self-examination, which presupposes that the interrogator had first encountered and resolved this question with oneself before he deemed appropriate to ask it of another. Thus, the works here, while evidently hovers around the issue of location and direction, may be noted to offer a prescription. Discipleship, following the Master, ring out in Atienza and Besana’s images. Balandra, on the other hand, reflects on the condition of the individual, burdened by weakness and sin, and yet acknowledges a way to redemption. This redemption and salvation centers on the image of the Redeemer, the Incarnate Son, whose death on the cross is foreshadowed in the biblical story of the Israelites healed of their illness by casting a glance at the serpent pitched high by Moses. In Munoz’ work, this redemption is afforded the person by his own free will, his active choice to follow Christ. This choice is preceded by an act of discernment and actual labor, which Jood acknowledges to be the work of contemplation, and Icasas, as conversation, which opens up possibilities and a discovery of life itself. Well in keeping with an

end in view, a destination sought, Victoria’s musings find comfort in a guide, the Blessed Virgin. As the works reflect on the artist’s own state in the here and now, these take delight in the wealth of imagery and symbols found in Christian Catholic tradition. Quo vadis? is a launching out into terrain, at once familiar and uncertain, in the hope of creating deep furrows to refertilize fallow ground.

Mitzie J. Icasiano

28 August 2013, Binghamton, NY

WORKS

DOCUMENTATION