Yvonne Quisumbing's Cartomancer follows a storyline from the innocent Fool towards the wisdom of the World. The narrative is told in ten oil on sculptural substrates, each representing ten out of the several archetypes in the Tarot deck. She lays down this powerful deck of designs that grounds the art of fortune-telling to folk healing. Frowned upon by conservatives, cartomancy is deemed as an unproductive pastime while traditional medicine is pushed to the outskirts by big pharmaceutical companies. Quisumbing prominently and defiantly weaves these two heresies to concoct a potent remedy for our era of speed and strife.
Cartomancer is the third in the Apothecary series inspired by Dr. Eduardo Quisumbing's Medicinal Plants of the Philippines (1951, 1978), an acclaimed catalogue of common Philippine flora with healing properties published to alleviate the suffering of Filipinos during post-war Philippines. In a bid to likewise glean through recent national and global tragedies, this most recent part of the series sets its unflinching gaze at our uncertainties amidst accelerating flux. Gently augmenting a sustained dialogue that reveals the unfolding spiritual and creative journey of an artist into the scientific and nationalist mind of her forebear, Quisumbing lays down an account that calls for a slowing down and delving deep into the knowledge of the self to counter the anxieties of a nation.
Adjani Arumpac
2263 Don Chino Roces Avenue Extension
Makati City
Manila, 1231
Philippines
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