Opal Mae Ong is a Filipino-American artist living and working on Lenapehoking in Brooklyn, New York. Their current body of work is informed by Philippine folklore, plant medicine, colonial histories- and the ways these ideas constellate, shaping both inner and outer worlds. Because of this, Ong’s practice is rooted in a felt response to the natural world and an innate reverence for the otherworldly.
Their paintings and drawings are inspired by lost ancestral knowledge and speculative visions, resulting in a personal myth-making. The work often conjures feminine figures as they crawl toward horizons, contort into fountains, commune with flora, carry moons, shapeshift, or collapse from unrest.
Ong’s palette evokes our liminal times of day: dawn, dusk, and night. In these in-between hours, the figures are suspended in states of poiesis. Where the figures move with a blind sense of trust through processions of landscapes, architectural boundaries, and borders where they somehow persist; weathering the terrain of each day.
Over the course of several weeks, the artist constructs, deconstructs, and reconstructs their paintings in an intuitive, materially-driven and reference filled process. This ongoing cycle of making, unmaking, and remaking allows them to navigate desire, familial losses and collective forces. For Ong, their daily studio practice becomes a portal for deep material engagement with ever-changing bardos. In Tibetan Buddhist teachings, bardos are liminal states where life, death, dreams, and awakenings coexist and where transformation is possible.
