“Naglalayag sa Sariling Dagat” is the first solo show of artist Archie Ruga. It tells the story of forming oneself, and shaping his identity. In a sense, water can often be compelled as chaos and disarray. For Ruga then, the exhibit is somehow a transition of one’s chaos into cosmos – to bring order and to beautify.

The artist began the chronicle where one usually begins – with the emergence of life. The work narrates how beings begin as a blank slate, how the rest shall follow through, and how this emptiness shall call for thirst – to fill life with anecdotes and events to bring meaning to his own.

In another work of the artist, he expresses his sentiment on the connection of one’s historicity to the present. He made use of a cherub casting a piece of music in the open air – an image he was once accustomed with which has now presented a different connotation growing up.

The often recurring elements in the exhibition refer to the influence of Ruga’s formation through the people around him – the wisdom and spirituality of the elders, as well as the resonance they conferred upon him. One of the works reflects the religious background, and motivation of the artist’s spiritual journey. A subsequent work expresses the solemnity of one’s spiritual journey – a force higher than gravity itself. How one may be incomplete but can run into a resting place.

And finally, the artist delves into unconditional love portrayed by the pieta. The kind of love that endures brokenness, tribulations, and pain – the kind that comes from people who had saved him.

For when we try to make sense of the world we can touch, we try to seize this self to define what becomes of us. Yet somehow, there are instances that no matter how we try to, we are nothing but water slipping through one’s fingers – consistently moving, constantly flowing.

-Karen Tesalona