Poklong Anading Counter Acts II, 2012 Photographic transparency, lightbox 189 x 402 cm Edition of 5 Filipino artist Poklong Anading’s series titled Anonymity that has since 2004 captured a multitude of individuals the artist encountered on the streets of the many cities he passed through, and whom he persuaded to be photographed while holding a circular mirror in front of their faces, began with this work, Counter Acts. The photographic gesture, of seizing a moment in time, where the act of sighting and the nature of light dictates the visual result, is doubled and foiled in his work. Instead, the gaze of artist and his subject as they regard one another directly, is obscured as light from the sun directed towards the camera by the mirrors controverts both the act of seeing and the act of photographing. In this first work of the series that comprises of a group photograph, this act of sight and its impediment is made to multiply within the work, intensifying its effect. The image that Anading captures is grainy, and with the intensity of the reflected sunlight that causes the photograph to overexpose, the image and its details are ironically perceived through the shadows rather than through the light that is captured. The expected result is not illuminative or revealing but of concealment and absence of knowledge. Presenting this image within a lightbox, the artist magnifies further the instability of the photographic surface, as this accentuation via the lightbox speeds up the degeneration and fading of the photographic image over time. Counter Acts is representative of the artist’s practice that ranges from photography, painting, video, sculpture to installation, in his approach and aesthetic sensibility. Anading’s projects are characterized by a distinctive perspective and observation of social phenomena and its processes, and more importantly his measured intervention in these. Scouring the streets and public spaces for his materials, he utilizes the ordinary and banal, responding subtly and immediately to his environment. The individuals whom he convinces to become subjects in the Anonymity series are momentarily engaged with the artist, and just as quickly they continue on their own way. In another notable work Light suffers if there is no place to fall from produced in 2007, Anading sets up a neon light in the shape of a mouse-trap at Finale Art Gallery in Manila. As viewers at the opening of the exhibition gather around the mouse-trap that appears to them as if the artwork, Anading, standing a distance behind them, surreptitiously captures their act of looking, photographically capturing his audience as they are snared by the light of the mouse-trap. As in Counter Acts, medium and subject are exchanged in a canny reversal, producing then not just an image or a representation, but a conceptual act. Words by June Yap
