Invictus

Invictus, Daniel dela Cruz’s newest solo exhibition, borrows its title from William Ernest Henley’s celebrated poem—best remembered for the defiant declaration, “I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul.” For dela Cruz, however, these lines do not enshrine the sovereignty of the isolated self; instead, they open a deeper reflection on how human courage, will, and striving are but recognitions of powers that surpass the self, ultimately returning to the presence of Christ. What appears as self-reliance is revealed as a form of surrender: an assent to the truth that our strength is sourced from beyond us.

Across a suite of sculptures—balletic figures balanced upon improbably slender pedestals, rotating gears that trace the choreography of bodies in motion, mask-like visages suspended in quiet vigilance, figures in states of contemplative stillness, and an entire gathering of crucifixes rendered in shifting scales—dela Cruz demonstrates how the body becomes a vessel of unearthly grace. The musculature, gesture, and momentum of each form feel charged, as though the animating breath that moves them originates not from human power but from the Divine. Metal, under dela Cruz’s hands, behaves less like matter than like an extension of spirit.

Henley’s poem, often read as a monument to existential grit, is reimagined here as a passage “from self-reliance to reliance on Christ.” The expressive motions of dela Cruz’s figures suggest that the true measure of inner fortitude is not enclosed within the self but expressed outward, cast into the larger universe as an act of devotion. As the artist explains, “This dialogue between self-will and divine surrender becomes the foundation of each piece”—a dialectic that gives shape to bodies striving yet yielding, ascending yet anchored in grace.

This exhibition marks a vital moment in dela Cruz’s ongoing creative journey, where craftsmanship becomes inseparable from faith. His ability to coax form out of metal, to translate weight into elevation and solidity into transcendence, is understood not merely as technical mastery but as vocation. The sculptor’s flame, the hammer’s strike, the slow revelation of figure emerging from raw material—these become liturgical acts, gestures of gratitude to the One who bestows vision and the capacity to shape it into being.

The resonance of this devotion emerges most clearly in his interpretation of Christ on the Cross, portrayed here without a beard. This youthful, unbearded depiction of the Savior reaches back to early Christian iconography, particularly frescoes in the Roman catacombs where Christ appears as a serene, almost classical youth. In these early images, His beardlessness signified eternal vitality and divine beauty, emphasizing not His earthly age but His transcendent nature—a tradition that dela Cruz thoughtfully continues.

Ultimately, Invictus—“the one who is unconquered”—points not to human indomitability but to the triumph revealed by Christ Himself: that true power is found in faithful surrender; in endurance shaped by love; and in a victory gained not through the domination of others, but through the overcoming of sin and death. As we are now in the month of December, the season that marks the birth of our Savior, the exhibition becomes a timely reminder that the Invictus we celebrate is not the self-made hero of individual will, but Christ incarnate, whose radiance defines all creation and in whom all victories find their source.