TEMPLANZA (Maraming Galaw)

Diana Gomez’s “Templanza (Maraming Galaw)” is the first installation in a series of works that looks into the changing cultural and physical contexts of artistic creation. Born in Colombia, Gomez had previously lived in Bogotá, Paris, and Accra. Today, she lives with her family in Manila. These relocations marked the artist’s exploration of the shifting environments that surround her art practice.

Drawn from one of the four cardinal virtues recognized by Plato, temperance is the practice of moderation and self-restraint. Gomez’s attempt to recreate this virtue in this series is a way of understanding the hastiness of change in the places she had lived and how it had transformed an individual. Thus, the search for balance is emphasized and materialized through three art forms: painting, sculpture, and performance.
In this exhibition, Gomez’s paintings present gestural abstraction that simulates fragments of nature and the organic harmony it embodies. These gestures and markings elaborate the artist’s control over the canvas, and the fluctuations in motion are observed. Thus, resulting in forms that appear like imagined landscapes.

Meanwhile, to understand the cultural contexts of the places where her art-making resides, Gomez had worked with individuals in Manila to produce soap sculptures molded in the shape of a nose. Here, every sculpture represents someone Gomez had collaborated with while working on the pieces. In recognizing the places inhabited, the olfactory system is an essential part of perception. The sculptures contain relevant fragrances inspired by combining nature elements, thus, striking for that balance in our sense of smell.

Finally, relational aesthetics come into play with Gomez’s “Templanza (Maraming Galaw)”. The installation’s final stage is the distribution of the nose sculptures through a performance where the public is invited to smell the nose sculptures and then select from a pool any nose that they feel akin to. Thus, bringing back the notion of experience to the people in the location where the art was made and where it should live.

About the artist
Diana Gomez (b. 1975, Colombia) is an inter-disciplinary artist whose works range from painting, photography, sound installation, and performance. She received Masters in Fine Arts from Jorge Tadeo Lozano University (Bogota) and University PARIS I Fontenay aux Roses (Paris). Her works were exhibited in different international art institutions in Colombia, France, Peru, Croatia, Romania, and Ghana.