Portraiture captures the complexities of its subjects that others might not even perceive–a furtive look, a unique gesture, a distinctive feature. Maya Muñoz also known as Dharmabum endeavors to go beyond these intricacies and communicate something skin deep, something most temporal and subject to the reverberations of time.

You Take My Breath Away sees her put these preoccupations at the forefront. Each portrait in the exhibit–completed over the course of 3 years–marries the potent, dynamic spirit of neo-expressionism and abstraction with the quiet intimacy of portraiture. The result is a collection of portraits thrumming with a rigorous yet anarchic energy.

As a mixed media artist, her works tend to be figurative and expressive and, at other times, abstract and minimal. She has a studio in both Manila and her hometown province of Albay as she considers both places her creative source, between the volcanic landscape and the sea and the chaotic buzz of Manila. She deems herself reclusive and her creative psyche forever rooted in this unpredictable and mercurial landscape.

Muñoz is a graduate of San Jose State University, California, USA. She has participated in numerous group shows in the Philippines, Singapore, UAE, China and the USA. She has been collected in Indonesia, France, Singapore, Philippines, United States, Portugal, amongst others. In 2006, she was awarded the prestigious 3rd Ateneo Art Award, Philippines and in 2010 presented Extensions, a monumental solo exhibition at Lopez Museum, Philippines.