In softly, firmly, Mikee presented the first pieces from her series 'Panali', where she explores how Filipino values are reflected in materials used for tying. Using brown and white stoneware, together with abaca and rubber, she weaves together objects that hold treasured pieces.
Group Show
May 3—25, 2025
1.1 Ceramic trinket dishes in stoneware and abaca alongside Jezzel Wee's ceramic trees.
1.2 Ceramic trinket dishes in white stoneware, rubber, and dyed abaca.
These ties—made of rubber and abaca—show resourcefulness, care, and creativity. Tying isn't just a task, it's a gesture of keeping things whole, of preserving what we have. Whether mending tools or bundling harvests, it's a way of saying things still matter, still have use. These materials are more than practical—they root us in place. They speak of a life intertwined with the land and the sea, shaped by tradition.
— Mikee Naval
1.3 Two single-stem vessels, one with a cutting.
1.4 Mikee and Jezzel's pieces in situ.
The group exhibition softly, firmly presents functional-sculptural pieces by five artists (Ciane Xavier, Genavee Lazaro, Jezzel Wee, Marco Rosario, and Mikee Naval) working with ceramics in the Philippines. From its title, the collection through its functional turn casts a paradoxical appraisal of the nature of clay that is malleable in its possibilities yet rigid in its ability to uphold form and intent. In the present series, the pliability of the medium engenders a broad range of objects that span various practical purposes: ritual paraphernalia, flower vessels, incense cones, and trinket plates, among a few. They arise from equally varied creative impulses—some as experiments in form and process, others as reverence to spiritual and cultural significations. Altogether, the ceramic works traverse manifold spheres of daily life to reflect the receptiveness of clay to one’s artistic, personal, and social exigencies. — Chez Santiago
1.5 softly, firmly curated by Liv Vinluan