Poklong Anading was born in 1975, in Manila, Philippines. He earned a BFA in painting from the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines (1999). He completed residencies with Big Sky Mind, Manila (2003–04), and Common Room, Bandung, Indonesia (2008). Having begun as a painter, he now works primarily in video and photography. He also expanded into process-oriented sculpture and installation informed by Arte Povera, making work that appeals to all the senses. He often assumes the roles of observer and collector, turning facts and memories into images and objects, and frequently engages social issues. In 2006, he received the Ateneo Studio Residency Grant in Australia and a Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artists Award. Anading won the Ateneo Art Award in 2006 and 2008.
Read MoreThe video installation Ocular (2009) explores the limits of documentation. Seeking to connect with the moments captured in a collection of photographs of the artist’s late mother, accumulated during her 11 years as a domestic worker in Hong Kong, Anading traveled with the keepsakes to the places they pictured. By assiduously tracing these sites, he created a poignant memorial to his mother, and to his experience of her absence, while underscoring the elusive quality of the photographic subject. The artist has also assembled projects such as the exuberant Miracle Healing and Other Hopeful Things (2011), which incorporates scavenged paint cans, construction debris, discarded tires, and disused cleaning rags (the ubiquitous basahan or trapo of the Philippines) as part of a constructed environment. The vibrantly patterned basahan provided a means for Anading to bring color into his work—something he had previously resisted. He first used the fabric scraps in 2008, also repainting the found patterns onto fragments of concrete rubble for his exhibition Fallen Map (2008).
Anading has had solo exhibitions at Finale Gallery, Mandaluyong City, Philippines (2004, 2005, and 2007); Mag:net Gallery, Quezon City, Philippines (2004, 2007, 2008, and 2009); Mag:net Gallery, Makati City, Philippines (2006); Cross Art Projects, Sydney, Australia (2006); Finale Art File, Makati City (2007, 2008, 2010, and 2012); Ateneo Art Gallery, Quezon City (2009); Pablo Fort, Taguig City (2010); Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Graz, Austria (2010 and 2012); and MO Space, Makati City (2011). His works were presented in the two-person exhibition Between Signs at Silverlens Gallery in Makati City (2011). Anading organized and participated in Room 307: Inkling, Gutfeel and Hunch at the National Art Gallery in Manila (2008). He has been included in notable group exhibitions such as: Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2002 and 2012); Galleon Trade: Bay Area Now 5, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2008); Some Rooms, Osage Gallery, Hong Kong (2009); Arena, 8th Jakarta Biennial (2009); Bastards of Misrepresentation, Freies Museum, Berlin (2010), which traveled to Bangkok and New York (2012); Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2012); and Marcel Duchamp in Southeast Asia, Equator Art Projects, Singapore (2012). Anading lives and works in Manila.
Source: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
