(We talked at the same time as we were agreeing which works to include in the exhibition After the Storm at Mizuma Gallery, Singapore.)
Tony Godfrey. Ling, I thought we could start by talking about your scribble works – the scribbles. An obvious question: are the scribbles by you? If not by whom?
Christina Quisumbing Ramilo. The Scribbles were collected over a span of several years, and from different places: Manila, Siem Reap, Taipei, KL, Bangkok, Jogja etc.
TG. They are not made by you?
CQR. No. They are scrap pieces of paper that people use to test pens and markers.
TG. But they are never doodles where people in boring meetings make comic and ridiculous drawings?
CQR. No. Most of them come from art supply stores and bookshops.
TG. Do you collect them all personally or do friends collect for you too?
CQR. Mostly me. About 98%.
TG. Is that important? That from the start you choose what to take?
CQR. Yes. It’s part of the process of acquiring them. I take as many as I can and edit them when I get home. The not so interesting ones are put underneath, like an underpainting to sort of give the work a layer.
TG. So, once selected they just become materials. You never make scribbles solely using scribbles found in Manila or Jogja or Taipei?
CQR. Actually, they are mostly arranged that way. Mostly from one city since it’s difficult to get a lot from one store alone. Though in Manila, it’s easy to go back to National Bookstore many times.
TG. I suppose what I am getting at is whether you see yourself as an artist or an anthropologist? Do you compose them as you would an abstract painting or to reveal how a particular group of people scribble?
CQR. I guess it’s like making a documentary. Things unfold and you work with what you have. It’s also like creating a painting with the underpainting/layering – but with the materials that I have collected. I am limited to the materials that I have on hand so it takes me a long time to finish a work because I need to collect enough. It has to stay authentic so they can’t just be mixed up.
TG. “Authentic” is an intriguing word! Is that something you feel intuitively as you work?
CQR. Absolutely. It’s easier to use extra materials to make things more attractive but part of the challenge is to do as little intervention to the materials that I use.
TG. So, in fact, you are like an anthropologist presenting her findings from a field trip?
CQR. I guess you could say that, but with some artistic license.
TG. How long exactly do you work on each scribble work? How do you know one is finished or complete? BTW I find them very beautiful.
CQR. Thank you!
It all depends. It usually takes me several years to collect enough materials to do a work. I have countless bins of different materials. I would say for the whole scribble series, it took me maybe 4-5 years to collect enough. Once I have enough for a work, I work on several pieces at a time then work on other unrelated works so that when I come back to it, I can see the works more objectively.
I like the impermanence of using pins rather than glue because I can still move things around. I also like that even at the end they are not completely glued.
TG. Returning to the question of when a work is finished: that is, I presume, an intuitive thing, though based on years of experience.
CQR. Yes, very intuitive. That’s why I hardly work on a piece uninterrupted from beginning to end. I usually work on several works at a time so as to give them breathing space.
TG. You speak as if you think of them as organic, living entities.
CQR. Because I use a lot of different materials, their origins are important to me. They all have history.
I am thinking of including these two works as well:
TG. I agree. You should include them. They seem very connected to me. Mute, human objects. Things that have drifted over the ocean I presume.
CQR. The objects were given to me by Martha Atienza from the shores of Bantayan Island. The blue background is from the West gallery frame shop where they cut boards. And the green background is from the UP College of Fine Arts Printing dept where they cut their plates.
TG. Obviously, it is important to you that the background came from West Gallery and the objects were given by Martha. It seems the works are a little bit like a diary. Do you ever list who or where you get elements? I know you do this for used paintbrushes – naming the artist who gave them to you.
CQR. Always. I always name who owned it or gave it to me. Unless I found an object on the street or from a thrift shop.
TG. When did you make your first scribble piece?
CQR. Early this year.
TG. But you have been collecting the actual scribbles for many years!
CQR. Yes. Usually, the idea comes years earlier. It’s just a matter of collecting enough to make a work. In Kulimlim, a piece with used sandpapers given me by Geraldine Javier, for example, it took me forever to work on it because I didn’t have much to play with. When I finally finished it, it needed something more so I added the guava branches – working in a way that is similar to her aesthetics.
TG. May I ask a bit more about the scribbles: Will you carry on collecting scribbles and making scribble works? Or are these the last?
CQR. With the current situation, it’s hard to collect them. Travel is also close to impossible.
TG. And in terms of composing, you were talking of planning this wall of your works in Singapore. How are you doing that: are you laying pieces down on the floor and seeing which ones go well together or are you planning it digitally on a screen – or is it just planned in your head?
CQR. I usually do a sketch on my math notebook. I’m low tech.
TG. Like me! OK, the pencil works – when did you first make one of those?
CQR. I made my first pencil work in 2008 from pencil stubs found at the construction site while renovating my grandmother’s house. The piece Broken is They are from a collection of broken pencils that I’ve collected for years. I’ve been doing those on and off for over a decade; but when the pandemic started, I still had so many that I started to do some works again. This was mainly to keep myself busy and sane. I use some of them to doodle or scribble if they are too sharp. So, I have a lot of doodles made from the pencils.
TG. One day will you make a scribble piece from your own!
CQR. Maybe.
TG. I like it that connection between the pencil pieces and the scribble works is being emphasised!
CQR. It was a nice break to make smaller works. More introspective. Intimate.
TG. Yes, pandemic works made at the kitchen table!
CQR. Exactly!
TG. When I look at the pencil works, I often think of Dan Flavin’s neon pieces: Homage to V. I. Tatlin. The scribble pieces sometimes make me think of the collages of Kurt Schwitters or Daniel Spoerri. Are these artists that interested you? Were there important “influences” or models for you?
CQR. Not consciously. I love the New York Skyline so the pencil structures are very art deco. And some are based on temples from Cambodia and Indonesia. I am familiar with Dan Flavin’s work and Tatlin. And Kurt Schwitters,
TG. Do you see yourself in a collage tradition which would, I guess, include artists such as Braque, Picasso, Joseph Cornell, Schwitters etc.
CQR. I have always wanted to do collages but so far have not experimented enough, apart from my sandpaper works. I am a big fan of Joseph Cornell.
Is it possible to include this work, Portal, in the Singapore exhibition? I think it works well with the work that uses Geraldine’s used sandpaper.
TG. I agree.
CQR. The old frame and colourful facade belonged to the late Dick Daroy.
TG. I don’t know who he is.
CQR. He passed away a few years back and his works dealt with decay. He collected old frames – something I do as well – so after he passed, I got the opportunity to use some that he left behind, as a tribute to his legacy.
TG. OK. Maybe this is the point where we go back to the beginning and talk about when and why you went to the US and what you did there.
CQR. I moved to New York in 1985 right after I graduated from UP. I went there to take my Master’s in Studio Art and Art Education. Then I just stayed for 23 years.
TG. Before that who taught you in UP? What sort of work did you make there?
CQR. Fernando Modesto had an impact on me – he was unorthodox in the way he taught. I studied Editorial Design and Illustration. I wanted to be a children’s book illustrator. Actually, I really wanted to study Painting but my parents thought I wouldn’t survive as a painter. But, eventually, they agreed to let me study Painting when I promised that if they let me, I would never be a burden to them or my family. I was pretty persuasive! Naive too, I guess.
TG. Can I ask what your parents did? Were you brought up a Catholic or Buddhist? Were you a country girl or a townie?
CQR. My father was a government employee. My mom was a teacher. I grew up very Catholic. I grew up in the city. My mom also taught arts and crafts.
TG. Did you learn a lot from her – about working with materials?
CQR. Yes, I guess, and recycling stuff too. I hated it growing up but look where and what I ended up with!
My father loved wood and used to varnish and revarnish our furniture. He was pretty good. I learned mostly from watching them. They didn’t want to be disturbed. My mom did a lot of beadwork and loved to bake – that I didn’t inherit!
TG. How did you survive in NYC?
CQR.. My aunt (my mom’s sister) adopted me legally so she paid for my schooling and after I graduated, I had to work to support myself. Mostly art related jobs. I worked in a fine arts bronze foundry where they would make Erte sculptures and a whole series of Yoko Ono works. Then I worked at the Frick Art Reference Art Library for nine years as a Page Supervisor. I had access to a multitude of art references and rare books, I loved the images. After that, I did freelance work, working in galleries at the office and installing works.
TG. What about your own work? Were you mainly making paintings in New York?
CQR.. I would paint weekends and I managed to show here and there. When I quit my full-time job, I just wanted to paint and do just enough part time work to pay bills. Then I realized that my parents were getting old and that it made sense to move back home and do my art here and take care of my parents. I figured that I had had my fill of New York and having a lifestyle of a twenty-something year old.
TG. Do you want to reproduce one of the works you made in New York or is that all behind you now, and you began again as an artist when you returned to the Philippines in 2008?
CQR. I was painting mostly figurative works and powerline paintings. My works totally changed when I moved back here.
TG. Initially you were based in the country side I believe.
CQR. I lived in Quezon City, where I renovated my grandmother’s house. That made me shift to more 3 D works. Eventually I moved my studio to Cavite and I tried living there for a few years but transporting works was expensive and it was hard to find a good carpenter to assist me. I hardly go there now. It’s hard to live alone.
TG. I visited you there a few years ago. In my memory it was a house of many doors, an art work in its own right – as is your house in Manila.
CQR. Yes, it was. I call them both functional assemblages.
7th September
TG. Hi Ling. How are you?
CQR. I just got a Covid test.
TG. Are you OK?
CQR. Yes, negative! Phew!
TG. That is good to hear. Shall we talk about ART?
CQR. OK.
TG. You said that it was when you built your house of doors that you started making smaller art works?
CQR. I initially had an architect redesign my grandmother’s house in Quezon City, but I eventually scrapped the plan. I bought a whole lot of old doors and windows and sort of collaged it to the skeletal structure. I made small and big works there.
TG. What was wrong with the plan? Boring? Impracticable? Too expensive? Or just not you?
CQR.. Nothing was wrong with it. I just wanted to use the doors and windows and other architectural details that I had bought. It was a major renovation of my grandmother’s house. It was actually more expensive to renovate than build anew.
TG. It normally is! Just to be clear: the house of doors was your grandmother’s house?
CQR. Yes. I left parts of the house that weren’t in bad shape – like some of the flooring and old windows and grills. My architect was supportive and she would come every week to check on my plans and designs. But actually both of them were.
TG. So, having collected the doors and windows you made plans, not just improvised as you went along? But I assume the project was effectively led by the materials or objects you had to hand.
CQR. Yes. I was hands on, I would make the sketches and measurements and be on site to make sure it was done how I wanted. The leftover scraps from the construction led me to start creating 3 D works.
TG. In making the house were you looking at the work of other architects? the early work of Frank Gehry or outsider art like the Watts Towers?
CQR. It was a mixture of Filipino and Western art Deco. I’m also a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese aesthetics.
TG. Yes, when I visited the house, I was very aware of the Japanese feeling – the sense of intimacy, enclosure but also light and space.
CQR. It has a bit of a Sarah Winchester Mansion feel to it too but in a much smaller scale
TG. Sorry, Ling, but I don’t know what Sarah Winchester Manson is.
CQR. It’s an eccentric house in California built by the widow of the man who owned the Winchester firearms company, and was funded by money from that business. Many doors and stairs that go nowhere.
TG. Your house in Alfonso also struck me as a house of lairs. There were so many doors leading to unknown rooms and hiding places.
CQR. Yes. But unlike the Winchester Mansion, all the doors open up to something
TG. There are no hiding places in your house!
CQR. Oh yes, there are!
TG. But it doesn’t have that scary, alienating, discombobulating feel that the multi-room installations of Mike Nelson or Gregor Schneider do?
CQR. I realized when I built it that I must be claustrophobic! Too many windows and doors to exit from! The house is pretty open.
TG. Yes – the exact opposite of Nelson or Schneider!
CQR. I don’t know their work. I need to google them later.
TG. Check out Gregor Schneider’s installation Totes Haus u r at the Venice Biennale in 2001 and Mike Nelson’s installation The Coral Reef at Matt’s gallery in 2000. So, your sculptures from the start were both non-representational and architectural.
CQR. Yes, they were combinations of stuff. I had too many things in my house – as I do now! I used a lot of stairway stringers. I guess it was my tribute to Brancusi.
TG. Could we say that at heart you are a collector and like most collectors you always buy too many things so you eventually crowd yourself out of your own house?
CQR. Yes. If I wasn’t an artist, I would just be a hoarder. Objects interest me a lot. Their usage and history.
TG. “The artist as hoarder” would be a very interesting exhibition. So, each work begins with your interest in an object, its history and usage.
CQR. And then I think the challenge is what to combine with what so that it creates another story. I see too many possibilities with discarded materials: it becomes a problem: I am running out of space to store them!
TG. It is interesting that you use the word “story”. I always feel, though I am not sure if I can articulate quite why, that your works are story-telling.
CQR. I guess what I feel is that all objects have a story and that when combined sometimes, it gives you a clue, a snippet of something that, hopefully, the viewer can be curious about.
TG. Can we say that they are the materials for the viewer to make a story with?
CQR. I guess. Everything has a history. Even when I use old wood with paint on it, I know what colour paint that period came from.
TG. Perhaps in another life you will be an archaeologist, dating the ruined frescoes and mosaics of ancient buildings.
CQR. Perhaps.
TG. You selected four older works to talk about. One – Mata – uses animal bones. I know of two other female artists who used chicken and pork bones like this: the Mexican surrealist Remedios Varo and the Australian artist Lindi Ivimay. But both of them made or make sculptures that are animal-like or anthropomorphic. Yours is always abstract. At heart you may be a story teller but at heart you are also something of a minimalist – Mata is a simple spiral just as used by Richard Long or Robert Smithson.
CQR.. I mostly use chicken wish bones. They are very hard to collect and cleaning them is tedious. Mata refers to the eye of the storm. The two bigger works I did with the bones were calendars. One was Leap Year but it was arranged by week with a flower design. One wish per day
. For a whole year.
TG. What a nice thought! But the bones are very clearly cleaned. Recently I bought some Igorot ritual objects. Bones held together with old cloth, mud and probably dried blood. They spooked Geraldine out so much I had to take them back to the gallery. Your works are the antithesis of that. I think you are more of a minimalist than a witch doctor or shaman.
CQR. Haha, I am very sensitive so I try not to use objects that I think might have bad juju. I clean most of them with salt.
TG. Why salt?
CQR. It’s supposed to take out the bad spirits. A sort of cleansing. I mix it with the soap when I’m cleaning objects and add salt if I’m boiling bones to take out the extra meat and blood. Whatever works! I sometimes even sage a room.
TG. Clearly, like other Filipinos you believe in spirits. You are part Catholic, part animist. Did this concern with spirits happen when you returned home? And what do you mean by “sage a room”?
CQR. It’s happened to me in New York and here. In New York, I used to buy a lot of old furniture and things and there was one week when I had a migraine headache for all seven days and I was exhausted. I asked a friend/healer to check my apartment and she said there were many spirits in my apartment. The next day, I flew to SF and the whole time there I had no migraine, but once I got back, the migraine returned. My friend came and did a ritual with frankincense and sage.
Here, they always tell you to put a medallion of St Michael on the windows and I also put salt sometimes on leaves then throw it out after a day or two. There was also an incident in Alfonso but maybe some other time.
TG. Why not now?
CQR.. OK. I bought this two-piece Japanese cabinet from a surplus store. I put it in the living room where Rose, my assistant used to sleep. She complained that she was hearing scratches inside around three AM.
I told her it must be the humidity and the wood moving.
On the third night, she knocked on my door and asked if she could sleep in my room because she was hearing the scratches again.
But I could hear them too!
So, in the morning, I told her I had a blessed rosary and I would put it on top of it and that would fix it. When I did, I felt a strong surge of energy from my hand all over my body. The energy spread so we put the cabinet outside and left.
So, the next day, I burnt sage, incense and sprinkled holy water and put salt all over the cabinet and returned it to the store. I didn’t even ask for my money back! I was too scared to burn it.
Needless to say, I don’t buy old furniture anymore 
.
TG. Very sensible! I am far more aware of experiences like that here than I ever was in the UK. We used to have bad feelings from the old mango tree between my library and the guest rooms. Eventually a visitor from the US sleeping in one of the guest rooms became possessed and tried to throw herself out of the upstairs window; she was speaking in a voice other than hers. In the morning she was unaware that he had acted so weirdly and had woken everyone up in the middle of the night with her screams. We had the house exorcised by a faith healer and then by a regular priest and we built a little spirit house beneath the tree. That assuaged whatever or whoever it was.
CQR. Scary shit! Do these things happen in England?
TG. Yes, but less so, and most people won’t believe them. Getting back to Minimalism which is non-scary (unless like Robert Smithson you think it was uncanny), can we talk about the brick sculpture or installation you made in a gallery’s basement in Indonesia? Again, it is potentially narrative – either a stairway to heaven or to nowhere? But it is also made in a very straightforward, minimal way – brick on brick.
What made you want to make a staircase – one that would have to be demolished at the end of the exhibition?
CQR. I liked the idea of using the basement with a stair going nowhere. I liked the process of building something that, as in the case of most of my installations, was impermanent. It was also to do with labouring after something. Like the steep stairways in temples. Also, there was the influence of the Sarah Winchester stairs that mostly go nowhere.
TG. Or the horribly steep staircases on the temples in Mexico.
CQR. Yes, exactly! Also, a tribute to Carl Andre.
TG. I believe those stairs in temples are a symbol of an ascent to the heavens, to get closer to the divine in a physical sense.
CQR. I use the stair structure a lot, but, mostly, they don’t really go anywhere.
TG. Apart from Filipino animism, it seems you are still sincerely Catholic. Do you still go to mass or confession on a regular basis?
CQR. Yes, still Catholic. I go to mass Christmas and New Year. Can I show you two other works?
TG. Yes. Both works demand to be seen as metaphors. Catholicism is a religion of metaphors.
CQR. The second image is a bridge under construction. However, when they meet at the centre, they won’t be aligned. Below, at the centre, is a Salvavida, a lifesaver, but it’s made of concrete.
TG. The material I associate you most with is sandpaper – used sandpaper. I know that the giant triptych, Endless Days, which you made of pieces of used sand paper given to you by friends is especially important to you. Do these bits of used sandpaper carry some metaphor?
CQR. Yes, of anonymous labour. Except for some that were given to me by Soler Santos, Leo Abaya, Geraldine and a few others they are things I have found discarded by people I do not know.
TG. So, normally you just gather it as you do scribbles?
CQR. Yes, these are all markings of different people.
TG. A homage to the unknown craftsman.
CQR. However, the first few years when I was making these, I knew the people who used them and where they were used. This was when they were building the house.
I also love the texture.
I also love that you can guess when it was used or what was built.
It’s authentic!
TG. The fourth work you selected the library of wood was a wonderful installation – one that really resonated for me, though I was surprised you chose its installation at the Manila Art fair rather than in a private museum where it actually felt like a library with room you could enter.
CQR. Let me send you an image of the one at Sanso museum that you liked best. It was the most organized. It was, by the way, important for me to use the scrap wood from Las Casas Acuzar because that was from historic and ancestral houses.
TG. Which iteration did you prefer?
CQR. They are all different – and all hell to install! but I especially loved the feedback I got from the third one I made at the Jogja Biennale because they seem to really get the point, and the books were all written upon by the audience with chalk.
TG. You asked them to write on them in Jogja?
CQR. Yes. The same for all three installations. The wood I used in Jogja was from old Javanese houses they were tearing down to make modern concrete houses or to convert into boutique hotels.
TG. So, the wood had rich associations just as old books have a rich feel to them – things lovingly made and handled.
CQR. Yes! And full of history being demolished to make “room for progress”. The viewers were invited to write their proposed title or story with chalk on the wooden books.
TG. OK. I remember now, but didn’t do that. I am not a big joiner-in. One last question. What will be your next big project: do you have something in mind? Or, after the big show at Finale are you just letting things settle?
CQR. Honestly, for the first time in a long time, I’m in a blank! I guess I’m taking Geraldine’s long overdue advice to take it easy. I’m taking care of my mental health mostly. I’ve been sleeping a lot and watching Netflix.
I think for a while I just want to do small works or works that I can just have fun with.
TG. I think everyone has to do that sometimes. It’s a bit like crop rotation – sometimes you have to leave the field fallow, nothing much happening except the soil recharging itself with nutrients and rain and sunlight.
