Lot 275: WAWI NAVARROZA

WAWI NAVARROZA B. 1979 STILL MISSING (YOU) AFTER FRIDA KAHLO'S MISSING WORK, THE WOUNDED TABLE, 1940 SIGNED, DATED MMVII AND NUMBERED 7/10 ON THE REVERSE ARCHIVAL DIGITAL C-PRINT image: 77.5 by 122 cm.; 30 1/2 by 48 in. sheet: 82.5 by 127 cm.; 32 1/2 by 50 in. THIS WORK IS NUMBER SEVEN FROM AN EDITION OF TEN PLUS TWO ARTIST'S PROOFS

Manila, Santa Frida: 100 Años Entre Nosotros (Navarroza Homage to Frida Kahlo) in commemoration: Frida Kahlo's birth centennial (1907-2007), Galería de Exposiciones, Instituto Cervantes de Manila, Philippines, July 6, 2007 - August 4, 2007

Manila, Swarm In The Aperture: Recent Photography in the Philippines, The National Museum of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines, 2008

Paris, PX3 de la Photographie, Paris, France, 2009 (Awarded the 3rd prize-Portraiture for this work)

Torino, Contemporary Filipino Artist in Turin, Verso Galleria Arte Contemporanea, Torino, Italy, November 4, 2009 – January 21 2010

Siegen, Photographers: Network, Studio Thomas Kellner, Siegen, Germany, June 2010

Seoul, Emerging Wave: ASEAN-Korea Contemporary Photography Exhibition 2010, Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul Arts Centre, Seoul, Korea, May 13-23, 2010

Busan, Emerging Wave: ASEAN-Korea Contemporary Photography Exhibition 2010, GoEun Museum of Photography, Busan, Korea, June 18-August 8, 2010

Santa Frida: 100 Años Entre Nosotros (Navarroza Homage to Frida Kahlo) in commemoration: Frida Kahlo's birth centennial (1907-2007), Exhibition Catalogue, Galería de Exposiciones, Instituto Cervantes de Manila, Philippines, 2007

Philippines Yearbook 2009: 61 Artists Who Will Change The World, Manila, Philippines: The Fookien Times Yearbook Publishing Company, 2009

"One hundred years after the birth of Frida Kahlo, I was appointed to work on an exhibit for the commemoration of her birth centennial (1907-2007) by Instituto Cervantes de Manila. The curator Jose Fons Guardiola saw my solo exhibit in that same year and thought my works and I reminded me of her. Now I have to be honest... I was unfamiliar with Frida Kahlo's work. I only know about her persona. Her image. And precisely because of that, I thought it was interesting. How superficial my initial knowledge was--as we all are--when it comes to how we look at icons and figures in popular culture. Theoretically, I was interested on the notions of identity that Frida Kahlo clearly put forward... in which, with this work of mine, I connected specially to how it related to Photography and the recorded image. On the other hand, at heart, I was curious and eager to learn more about her in a personal way, without the noise of media and other commercial fabrications. The first intention was an homage and then a commentary using Photography to speak about our reception of images. I wanted to know the iconography of her Likeness, our fascination with the Open Wound... The first challenge was research. Her iconography has been romanticized, commercialized in many different ways so i had to peel away much of these layers that covered the facts behind her... Everything was shot in-camera, the elements were not digitally composited... all the techniques were basic photography and lighting. ... [M]y piece Still Missing (You) is a play on words. It's based on the more obscured works of Frida Kahlo "La Mesa Herida" (The Wounded Table), one of her largest paintings which is until now still lost to the public since its exhibition in Moscow with Diego Rivera in the 1950s.

...In sum, the photographs in the series One Hundred Years Between Us is a homage from me to Frida but has the quality of a deadpan sort of nostalgia. It is a borrowed life, a tourism on appearance, a mimicking, an homage, an image that is recycled and repeated like a song many times over, a hymn for a broken time that has lost its trust in poetry and the sentimental. At the same time, a celebration of the unapologetic feminine, the flowers, the fruits, the dresses, the lush earth, and ultimately, the exalted heart that can stitch itself back again and again. Bang. Bang."
WAWI NAVARROZA CITED IN AN EXCERPT FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH MANFRED ZOLLNER, FotoMAGAZIN, GERMANY, 2010