Body.Work
Body.Work
A poem’s utterance demands immediate detachment from the body–from the mouth that utters, from the hand that writes–inevitably pushing the corporeal into the background and leaving only the intangible sound of words as material to work with. Artists attempt to capture these words and transmute such reverberations into a concrete visual form, thus extending a moment that was initially fleeting.
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| Installation shot of Body.Work courtesy for Vinyl on Vinyl. |
This dynamic complicates notions of body and work. In turn, certain propositions are possible:
The poet-artist’s body is a body at work. Notions of labor are unavoidable given the need for one to engage with the world in scale and, through the activation of their eyes, arms, legs, backs, and hands, reduce experiences in size in order for them to be viewed and carried and held. In this sense, the poet-artist facilitates the tedious and intensive distillation of experience and emotion into an assemblage of materials: sentences, punctuations, pauses (Manalastas), ink on a page (Aglipay), pinches in clay (Wee), running stitches on the borders of fabric (Tamoria).
The poet-artist creates a body of work. At a particular juncture, the abstract experiences that the poet-artist has immersed themselves in are rendered into bite-sized pieces. Months in the city are contained in a mere two pages. A workplace shutdown becomes cuts on rubber and wood. Anger is pressed onto earth. Purpose is woven into tapestries.
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| Artist Tekla Tamoria explains the works to a guest. Photo courtest of Marz Aglipay. |
The poet-artist commits bodywork. Hinged on the idea that such coordination with and manipulation of the body can be therapeutic, the poet-artist can only work with their body–what it can and cannot do, what muscle memory already incites it to do, and what excesses the body can handle. The poet-artist produces after much consideration of the body. Aglipay’s prints require backbreaking labor, Wee’s clay works demand control of the torso and hands, and Tamoria’s weaving calls for fingers so used to repetition. Through such bodywork, Manalastas’ works–originally borne of a desire to contend with grief–are reconstituted in a complex fashion. Words, somehow, become flesh.
In gist, all these propositions beg the question: where does the poet/poem end and the artist/artwork begin? After all, just like a poem’s utterance, the creation of art demands detachment from the body–from the back that breaks, from the teeth that gnash, from the hands that fold–inevitably pushing the artist into the background and leaving the audience with body.work.
- Regina Regala
Body.Work is a group show featuring Jezzel Wee, Tekla Tamoria, and Marz Aglipay featuring the poems of Alfonso Manlastas. The exhibit is on view at Vinyl on Vinyl from January 25 to 30, 2026.
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