KITASABITAK

In KITASABITAK, Doktor Karayom steps into the literal and figurative fissures of memory, faith, and form. In what may be his most pensive exhibition yet, he turns to the image of the santo: broken, dismembered, forgotten, but never discarded. A figure once revered on pedestals is reexamined not for its divinity, but for the cracks that have come to define it.

The exhibition’s title, a wordplay in Filipino, combines kita (to see) and bitak (crack). But it is no simple visual pun. The artist posits cracks as both literal and symbolic fissures—whether in sacred objects, systems of belief, or the faithful themselves. It resonates with Karayom’s meditation on sanctity, abandonment, transformation, and faith as a fragile but persistent structure, and compels us viewers to ask: What do we see in the cracks? In the fractures of plaster, clay, and cement, do we glimpse decay, transformation, or divine intervention?

What once functioned as a sacred object and familial witness—the household santo—has, in Karayom’s eyes, undergone quiet mutation. Inspired by childhood recollections and a more recent encounter with an abandoned house where an old Sto. Niño sat armless and dustcovered, KITASABITAK meditates on what it means when objects of veneration are left behind. Are they orphaned or merely outdated? If saints once stood beside families in moments of grief and celebration, what does their abandonment tell us about the shifting terrain of belief?

The central sculpture—an eight-foot-tall figure made of Karayom’s own blend of clay taking on the surface character of petrified stone—embodies the fragility and resilience of these saints. Armless, foot resting upon a severed head, its skin embedded with tiny cherubs, the sculpture is both an idol and an echo. Surrounding it are hundreds of red-painted sculpted hands strewn across the floor, supplicant, severed, reaching. These hands stand in for faith: lost, fractured, and renewed. Echoes of Greco-Roman mythology and anime-style regeneration emerge like Athena bursting from Zeus’ head and spirits reassembling in battle after being annihilated. And then, chaos gives way to multiplicity. Scattered on the floor: miniature human figures, each with a distinct gesture, posture, or contortion—some in headstands, others standing tall. They form an obstacle course of bodies and metaphors, inviting viewers to tread carefully. Like navigating prayer or crisis, the path is neither linear nor guaranteed. Our minds, Karayom suggests, move through mazes when we ask for answers from above.

A gallery wall is populated with one-foot-tall saint-like forms, their poses suggestive of dance or possession. They blur the line between divine animation and marionette spectacle. Who moves the santo? The spirit, or the strings? As they sway between reverence and performance, we are reminded of how image merges with belief, and how belief merges with the self. Elsewhere, wall-mounted heads—each around four by five feet—feature cracked surfaces adorned with filigree, iconography, and branching lines. These decorations may be looked at as fractures, like the creases in a palm, mapping out unknown destinies and lived histories. The head becomes a site of divination. One, in particular, becomes an altar: a flesh-toned Christ figure surrounded by cherubic witnesses, mirroring the viewers who come to reflect.

The final ensemble: three cement sculptures, muted in color but marked with imprints of coins. These forms resemble bulul figures, and their surfaces recall the worn depressions in folk altars where coins are placed, not only as an offering, but as an invitation for prosperity. The reference here crosses belief systems, tying pagan, Catholic, and Chinese folk traditions into a unified gesture of seeking relief from worldly needs.

Doktor Karayom does not mock belief. He does not sanctify it, either. Instead, in KITASABITAK, he turns belief inside out, letting its cracks breathe and letting its fragments and components disperse. The santo is no longer just a proxy for the divine—it is a repository of longing, projection, and survival. What animates the sculpture is not holiness, but the viewer’s gaze—the hope, doubt, and grief they bring to it. And in that, perhaps, lies its miracle