In the Meantime

This solo exhibition by Ma. Justina Redillas inquires into the emotional signification of religious imagery. Taking off from the artist’s personal milieu, it is a continuation of her previous explorations with santo sculptures, recasting them this time as material registers of one’s inner world—not only of pain, grief, and confusion, but also of hope. The emergent body of work remains consistent with her expansive approach to material that is tactile and contemplative, at the same time.

Redillas’s interest with the santo began with her family. Growing up among female relatives who practiced devotion to saints, she witnessed how they were able to gather strength and growth through their faith. The artist took this as her starting point and expanded her own meaning-making with the wooden sculptures over time. While the influence of her kin remains, her focus has shifted inward and into experiences of grief within the home and family.

In the context of this exhibition, Redillas shifts her attention to the reparative capacity of the santo. The title, In the Meantime, suggests a point of liminality or a period of transition between two states, particularly of pain and healing. Redillas frames the santo as the intercessor between these. Painting the wooden sculptures black to surface notions of mourning, she transforms this signification by adding layers of polymer clay largely fashioned after living forms, such as bioluminescent organisms, and interjects emotive value to her previous experimentations with organic imagery through the medium.

Through this, Redillas materially posits an interplay between loss and life and foregrounds the liberatory possibilities that may arise from this continuum. In particular, grief is overlaid—and transformed—through and into intentions of growth. The santo becomes the locus of this operation, deploying it not just as a passive referent but as the active facilitator of this process. “Through this work, I want to open up space for reflection, not just on pain, but on the hope and repair that can follow,” the artist shares. Visual and notional contrasts emerge as strategies to assert healing despite the insistence of pain, in the meantime.