Philippine Figurine: Image, Ornament, Art

This compelling collection of essays is a mediation on “the figurine,” theorised as a means to rethink concepts of art, ornament, the decorative and the devotional, and their postcolonial implications. Each of the seven essays is a close reading of a particular image, ranging from the annual procession of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo, Manila, to the work of the 19th-century painter Juan Luna. Written by leading curator Professor Patrick Flores, this third title in the National Gallery Singapore Art Writing imprint is an enlivening reading for those with an interest in art theory and the postcolonial condition of the image in the Global South.

Philippine Figurine is an elaborately annotated, exquisitely precise art-historical exposition of the cultures of the Philippines as an archipelago and a colony. It gifts to contemporary consciousness a spectral brilliance gained from material sites of cultural knowledge. Patrick Flores leaves us beholden.
—GEETA KAPUR, art critic and curator

National Gallery Singapore Art Writing is a new imprint celebrating the diverse voices and genres of writing that create the discourse of art in Southeast Asia, both historically and in the present. Going beyond conventional art history, books in this imprint include compilations of artist writings, art criticism and experimental approaches to the image. Philippine Figurine is the third title in this imprint.