GHOSTLY DOUBLES

"From Japan, they all found their way in a Japanese surplus shop in Tagaytay, 56 kilometers South of Philippines' capital, Manila. Being separated from the human hands to whom they belong provokes feelings of neglect and estrangement. They used to be someone's. A part of someone. They have names carved into them. Names to whom they used to belong. They are found objects with names of people who are not there anymore. Missing people. These objects are mostly hand tools carved with names of unknown people layered with dents, marks, dusts, fingerprints and memories. All combined, conjuring a ghostly dimension in our imagination. Trapped in the linear experience of time, we are made to become vulnerable beings confronted by abandoned objects. Confronted by abandoned objects, we become vulnerable beings seduced to conjure the hands, the arms, the face, the person, the identity and biography of the subject whom these objects belong to. But instead of evading vulnerability,ghostly doubles are made from these originals maybe more as a simulacrum to point out that while you are looking at these ghosts you will never really know the destiny of the original objects. Done in the real fashion of the 21st century, we are reminded that what we are mostly looking at, these days, are the simulacra of events through our gadget, tv and computer screens. And while we are looking at the simulacra, something else not quite the same is happening outside of that ghostly horizon of awareness.