Kiri Dalena, "Washed Out", video still and installation view

Trust Kiri Dalena to bring recent history home to us without resorting to horrific images of tragedy and destruction, but by making us feel the power of the river at the heart of a natural calamity.

In her solo exhibit, Washed Out, curated by Lisa Chikiamco, Kiri takes us to the aftermath of Typhoon Sendong.  It hit Mindanao in December 2011, striking Iligan City —where the artist’s mother, Julie Lluch, hails from—close to midnight on December 16. The Mandulog River overflowed, its surging waters swept away all in its path, uprooting trees, swamping homes, taking hundreds of lives, washing them all out into Iligan Bay.

Finale’s cavernous Tall Gallery serves as the setting for Kiri’s two videos, projected the same height as the space’s walls.  She scattered sections of felled trees transported from Iligan on the gallery’s floor area, providing perspective on the strength of the water that carried them away.  I happened to view the exhibit alone, in almost total darkness (it would’ve perhaps been better if the light from the exhibit upstairs could have been blocked off completely), sitting on one of the massive trunks, taking in the larger than life images.

Kiri’s installation succeeds in immersing her viewers.  You bob along with the log floating on waters that have calmed, watch as it is taken ashore, and understand the scale of devastation when you see it as just one of an immense pile of equally gargantuan trees that have also fallen from the typhoon.  The sound of the flowing river and the waves lapping the shore of the bay accompany Kiri’s quiet but piercing reminders of the catastrophe:  a dead bird entangled in a tree’s roots, an aerial view of muddy banks, an untethered goat, followed by a lone white rabbit, wandering amidst the heap of logs.

Running together with these pictures is Kiri’s other film, on the gallery’s left wall.  It captures the façade of a wooden home after the rains and flood, a portion of curtain still flutters now and again from its second floor — an ineffectual shield for a structure that has lost its roof.

Washed Out, a solo exhibit of Kiri Dalena, curated by Clarissa Chikiamco, runs from 7 to 30 June 2012 at Finale Art File, Warehouse 17, La Fuerza Compound, 2241 Don Chino Roces Ave. (Pasong Tamo), Makati City.  Phone (632) 813-2310 or visit www.finaleartfile.com

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