MANILA.- Silverlens will present The Orchid Pavilion, Part One of Wawi Navarroza’s trilogy “The Double-Naveled and Triple-Tongued, A Tropical Gothic Troika”, on view from 29 August through 03 October 2026.
“When future generations look back to my time, it will probably be similar to how I now think of the past.” -- Wang Xizhi (Lantingji Xiu) Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion. 353 CE
The Orchid Pavilion is the first of the artists trilogy of exhibitions informed by the Philippines’ transpacific exchanges, acculturations, and material and artistic histories shaped by the movement of the Manila Galleons. It focuses on the Philippines’ pan-Asian heritage, particularly the Chinese presence woven into Filipino identity.
Taking literature and poetry as points of departure, Navarroza turns to the Philippines’ layered past, looking beyond its broad strokes—heroes, events, and unified narratives—to the details within them. She approaches history through a sensorial lens, imagining the worlds inhabited by the people we now call Filipinos during the time of the Manila Galleons. Throughout the exhibition, she uses her body as a medium, inhabiting different identities and bringing the past into the present. Her tableaux conjure visions of Manila as a bustling, cosmopolitan entrept, where disparate people, languages, and traditions converged and left their traces on the city.
The works do not attempt to illustrate history. Instead, they propose ways of imagining it. Blue-and-white porcelain evokes networks of trade connecting distant worlds; Guanyin and Madonna sculptures reveal the movement and transformation of religious imagery. In Plural and Polymodal Riddle, Navarroza turns her attention to the present, questioning the labels and categories through which identities continue to be assigned. Drawing on colonial visual typologies, from the Boxer Codex to tipos del pas and costumbrista paintings, she poses with attributes associated with each label, indicated on pageant-style sashes. The works question not only the identities imposed upon us, but also the gaps in our understanding of the histories from which they emerged.
Her process is investigative and rigorous, while her presentation is instinctive, lush, and abundant. Familiar objects draw us in, connecting the distant to the everyday, and offering points of entry into histories that continue to shape how we see ourselves.
