Art from Within

US-based Filipino artist Jana Benitez, on her recent exhibition in Hong Kong, her artwork at St Luke’s Medical Center, and what we can gain from looking within

- By Lauren Dominique K Golangco.

“All the artists know we don’t make our art. It comes from within us,” states artist Jana Benitez. “We have the tremendous, humbling, insane privilege of just showing up and having it come through us.” And for the past 24 years, that’s precisely what Benitez has done—dedicating her artistry to exploring the boundless infinity of the human experience.

Take, for example, her recent solo exhibition, Wild Silence, at Pearl Lam Galleries Hong Kong. Happened in September to November last year, the pieces shown drew from Benitez’s multidisciplinary understanding of our inner worlds—a perspective she’s refined through studies in Buddhism, Taoism, Tantra, Christianity and contemporary psychology. A representation of our rich, latent consciousness, the collection “speaks to the subject matter of embodiment, sensation and somatic awareness that have been central to my painting practice this past decade”, Benitez describes.

The title aptly synthesises this sentiment, with Wild referring to the limitless networks of essential information within our consciousness and Silence capturing the need to tune out competing noise and zone inwards to make sense of the Wild. “In my opinion, we can tune into our bodies at an energetic level in much the same way that we put the radio on and listen to a specific station,” Benitez explains. “If we are tuned in just right and listening deeply, there is a vast, rich world of information there.”