Vien Valencia’s show at Vetted marks the return of the 2023 Ateneo Arts Awards recipient to painting. For his exhibition, dubbed “Strolling Home,” the artist utilized jute sacks he collected, initially unsure of how he would incorporate them. However, he was drawn to the markings indicating their origins -- India, Vietnam and other foreign lands.

As he has been exploring the concept of modern nomadism, he felt a connection to the sacks. The opportunity to use them arose when this University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts major conceived the concept for his show, with the title suggesting his return to painting after a break. Incorporating the jute sacks ties his current works to previous projects with indigenous peoples and reflects his experience of moving houses numerous times due to his parents’ unstable finances.

It’s not just the method of painting that the artist is revisiting; he’s also reflecting on the mood and experiences of his student days when he occasionally found himself strolling home because he didn’t have money for fare. Those walks inform his paintings, which evoke the visual language of the streets -- houses patched together with whatever materials their owners could gather, peeling paint revealing the many layers beneath and surfaces weathered by storms and the blazing sun. He recalls these scenes with a more critical perspective, replacing the Philippine landscape’s riot of colors with a stark palette of just black and white acrylic and house paints.