Nikki Luna

 

            Nikki Luna is a Filipino artist who is well-known for being a female voice in Philippine contemporary art. She makes esoteric sculptures and installations that resemble everyday things and materials but get a deeper focus via her technique, meanings that arise from struggling with women's identity, history, and challenges. Intimate stories of vulnerable and underprivileged Filipinas, as well as the mechanisms that perpetuate oppression against them, for example, intertwine with her process. The phrases "lady of the house" are embroidered into cowhide using hair strands collected from Filipina migrant laborers in Egypt.

            The phrases are nearly invisible as they blend with the stretched skin of a domestic labor animal, alluding to the cruel conditions of these laborers, whose rights and passports are revoked in order to serve their mistresses. Luna has poured her skills into projects that aid women and children who are victims of gender-based violence and displaced by armed conflict, working with NGOs, government agencies, academe, international women partnerships, and art institutions. Luna has had multiple solo shows and has taken part in major art festivals such as the Aichi Triennale, the Singapore Biennale, the Beijing Biennale, and the Festival International des Textils Extraordinaires.

Works

Precious and Fertile

It has pipes floating above the ground with a video of farmers playing immediately behind it. It was the equivalent of giving a blind man the capacity to see. It was all about the battle over who really owned the land between the government and the farmers of Hacienda Luisita.

Dancing with a Dictator (2018)

The burning shoe in the video is a wooden replica of the exact shoe that former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos wore when Ferdinand Marcos was sworn in as president. The shoe was created by carvers from Paete, Laguna.

Lady of the House, 2019

women’s hair (collected from Filipino domestic workers in Egypt), leather, thread, and cowhide rug

            The work is evocative of Luna. As much as she exposes and protests the words and actions of perpetrators in power, she most importantly amplifies urgent stories that have been silenced, sidelined, and forgotten – stories of women who have long been reduced to objects or numbers, but keep the world running despite carrying a pain that many of us will never know.

            Artist and human rights activist Nikki Luna raises awareness of violent misogyny by creating mixed-media sculptures and installations. Her unflinching feminist works —which typically relate to the body, in form or material —call attention to the injustices that Filipino girls and women experience within and beyond the country’s borders.

            Witnessing her artworks, we conclude that her works include the following elements and principles of contemporary arts: (1) Time because her artworks imply change and movement. (2) Perspective because she works with the real surrounding to produce her works.