What is home? Where is home? Is it a real or imagined place?

The method of using paper is highly accessible and is considered an expressive medium for conveying ideas and providing form. Ryan Villamael&rsquo;s distinctive sculptural style is demonstrated through his Rorschach-like symmetry and deliberate use of hand-cut layers. By creating intricate and fantastical installations, he is able to bend and push the limits of the simple mode of expression.

In the exhibition, Homecoming/Eventually, artist Ryan Villamael and Thai documentary film director and cinematographer Nontawat Numbenchapol contemplate ideas of home and return by fleshing out themes of belonging and the metaphorical construction of &ldquo;home.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;

It&nbsp;functions as a &ldquo;proposition to engage through visual art, with the contention of homecoming particularly from the geographic perspective of Southeast Asia to which a wave of &lsquo;homecomings&rsquo; has returned millions of overseas nationals.&rdquo;

L&rsquo;Officiel speaks to the artist to find out more about his latest exhibition, his body of work, and what informs his pieces.&nbsp;
Is your work informed by certain concepts or themes from your childhood, background, where you lived, or where you were raised?
Images of nature recur in my work, and I think that&rsquo;s the result of growing up in Cavite and later, going to school in the Philippine High School for the Arts, which is on Mt. Makiling. I grew up in a small town, and we lived a simple life but that also allowed me to grow up surrounded by nature, to learn from the land and appreciate the richness of simple things. 
My mom also worked in a science laboratory so these specimens were something I was always curious about and sort of familiar with.
What role does the artist have in society especially during these unprecedented times?
In a time of great unrest and uncertainty, I think art &mdash; whether it provides comfort or illumination or helps you confront something &mdash; is all the more important.

"In a time of great unrest and uncertainty, I think art &mdash; whether it provides comfort or illumination or helps you confront something &mdash; is all the more important."

Share with us how you got acquainted with Nontawat Numbenchapol and how the exhibition was born.
We were brought together by Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani, an Italian curator I had the privilege of working with for a show at the MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Thailand a few years back. I did an iteration of my work Locus Amoenus for that show and last year, she reached out about the possibility of doing another iteration of the work for Vargas Museum. 
Locus Amoenus is a work that started at the Singapore Biennale and has traveled to Thailand, Japan, and Manila. It means a lot to me to see this work in Vargas Museum, since I studied at the UP College of Fine Arts and always dreamed of doing a show there when I was a student. It&rsquo;s a true homecoming. 
Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, Nontawat and Loredana weren&rsquo;t able to make it to Vargas, so a lot of what we did was remote, through email threads and Zoom meetings. 
Is there an element of art you enjoy working with the most? Why? 
For the most part, I just enjoy the process of doing art and being able to make a living out of something that I love.

Did your upbringing prompt a specific reference point within your work? How did this impact your perception of home?
Definitely. I&rsquo;m the product of a family that was separated by distance, when my dad emigrated to work in the Middle East, in the hopes of being able to provide a better life for our family. 
One of the works in the show specifically references this. In the process of working on A Paradise Lost, I found myself confronting not just the tangled narratives of our country, but of my own personal history. My father is an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) worker who eventually disappeared from our lives. This piece references letters he wrote to me when I was a young boy. 
I deal with history a lot in my practice, narratives patched together from disparate accounts and experiences. And I realize, working on Paradise, that that might be my way of making peace with the tangled narratives in my own history. 
What is your most important artist tool? How does the method you&rsquo;ve chosen impact your work?
For this particular show, my handy precision cutting knife, which is what I use for most of my cutouts.

The Philippines has a rich history of emigration. Your panoramic installation entitled Terrain, After speaks to those who have endured hardship because of this movement. Why is it important to look through the Southeast Asian lens when considering the conceptual trajectory towards returning home?
The Philippines is one of the top countries in terms of export for manual labor. Overseas contract work is one of the most attractive employment options for many Filipinos. For a lot of people, it is the only option left.
We, as a culture, have a strong concept of home and we value our family. But sometimes, because of unforgiving circumstances, that bond is fractured. A lot of Filipinos are pushed to search for a better life abroad. And while there are those who enjoy the economic comforts of their labor from working overseas, there are as many workers who return home without fond memories at all, who find themselves physically and emotionally destroyed.
Do you believe that the idea of &ldquo;home&rdquo; is continuously being reconstructed?
Yes. I saw that for myself over the past year. Growing up, our house had always been a source of frustration for me. A project that was started but left unfinished when my dad left to work in the Middle East, I grew up in a home that was not quite a house &mdash; raw, unpolished, and with parts left undone.
Two years ago, I found the original blueprint of our house from the mid-90s, when my parents started to imagine building their dream house. Our house never became that dream house they had in mind when my dad left but it&rsquo;s become a continuing project for me and my mom. 
Most of our furniture are hand-me-downs or sourced from second-hand shops and gifts from friends and family. And over the last two years, I&rsquo;ve made it a priority of mine, to really make the house something warm and inviting, to kind of reclaim the house from that failed dream and turn it into something else, into a home for me and my mother.

"I&rsquo;ve made it a priority of mine, to really make the house something warm and inviting, to kind of reclaim the house from that failed dream and turn it into something else, into a home for me and my mother."

If we replace the language of nationality with the language of locality, we can shift our focus to how experience defines identity. Is &ldquo;home&rdquo; a form of fiction or does human experience define a home?
I would argue that the language of nationality also defines identity. This is a reality that we&rsquo;ve all had to confront throughout this pandemic, as Filipinos at the mercy of the policies of our lawmakers. It&rsquo;s surely not the only thing that defines identity but it&rsquo;s an inescapable part of who we are. 
You mentioned our country&rsquo;s history of emigration and that really stemmed from the 1970s during the Marcos regime. The impact of that has been felt for generations and I truly did, as someone who &ldquo;lost&rdquo; a parent to emigration.
Thinking of &ldquo;home&rdquo; as fiction might be a bit cynical for me. I still believe that human experiences define home. It&rsquo;s real. 
Who are your biggest influences? Did they inspire your work in Homecoming/Eventually?
I can&rsquo;t say there was anyone specific for Homecoming/Eventually. In general though, like anyone living in this pluralist society, I&rsquo;m inspired by a wide range of things, from film to history to the culinary arts.
The influence of the classic Western artists is unavoidable, of course. Henri Rousseau and Henri Matisse are two I&rsquo;ve always been inspired by. But aside from them, I also look to contemporary artists like Do Ho Suh and Kara Walker. Homecoming/Eventually&nbsp;is on view now through June 4, 2021 at the Jorge B. Vargas Museum in Quezon City, Metro Manila.&nbsp;

Ryan Villamael Contemplates Mobility in His Exhibition, Homecoming/Eventually

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