Geraldine Javier is widely known in Southeast Asia and beyond as a master of the uncanny and the strangely disturbing. Her exquisite and masterful paintings play on the allure and beauty of a darker side of experience. Over the years, the artist’s paintings have become increasingly layered and complex, not only in content and imagery but also through physical textures, as she began incorporating 3-dimensional craft-based elements in her canvases. Looking back, works such as Mother and Child (2007) – where a portrait of a Luzon Bleeding-Heart Pigeon framed in silver was set against the heavy backdrop of a woman's dress; and Arrangement in Grey and Black (2008) – metallic plates adorned with pretty patterns and images of seashells, beetles, and a singing blackbird are “hung” in the painted background, are among early evidences that displayed this tendency.

Since then, it would not be unusual to find framed insects and embroidered images of flora and fauna embedded in Ms. Javier’s canvas, or strands of tatting concealing painted images like foliage in the woods. Straddling the 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional realm, her works would develop further and take on interesting 3-dimensional turns as exemplified in recent solo exhibitions: Always Wild, Still Wild (2011) in Manila and later, Museum of Many Things (2011) in Singapore. In Manila, the artist presented a “hammock” installation The Tree in Me (2011) made from tatting and an embroidered self-portrait as the centrepiece of her show, while 3-d and vitrines became the highlight in Singapore. As Ms. Javier prepares her latest project in 20SQ entitled Red Fights Back, a work in progress, we chatted over email about the recent developments as well as her new spin on the beloved fairly tale Little Red Riding Hood as her own way to empower Little Red.

Adeline Ooi in conversation with Geraldine Javier