Affirming the Artistry of Joey Ea Isturis

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By Martin Genodepa

One of the marks of a true artist is consistency. Joey Isturis (born 1964) has been doing art since the 1980s. He has always been joining group shows in the city. He was part of the core local artists that made possible Hublag! The Ilonggo Arts Festival organized by the Arts Council of Iloilo. Before that, he was exhibiting his works in the showroom of the defunct Iloilo Society of Art at B&C Square on Iznart Street.

Isturis studied mechanical engineering in the University of San Agustin. He credits his father, a sign painter and also an artist, for his interest and involvement in art.

Isturis is one of the local artists who do not rely on art competitions for validation. He has been making sculptures, assemblages, and paintings in the same style and technique since the time when very few appreciate and patronize art in Iloilo. He is not exactly a starving artist because he supports his passion for art by working in construction companies practicing his mechanical engineering degree. This has kept him from losing his purity of intention and vision as a visual artist.

Isturis has been harnessing detritus to create sculpture – hardwood from posts of old houses, bones, fossils among others. His human figures are carved in a manner that is reminiscent of the style of folk art, squat and disproportionate in certain parts, with the original shape of the wood dictating the overall composition. For Isturis, this saves the rare and precious hardwood from being wasted. This approach to sculpture resulted in similarly-styled pieces that make them markedly “Isturisque.”

His paintings are also folk artsy and share affinity with typical naïf paintings. They are roughly concordant with his sculptures in terms of figuration. This consistency in style is not a proof of the limited artistic skills of Isturis, rather it points to his steadiness and dedication to perfect his technique so it can serve better what he wants to convey.

His structural and engineering background must have filtered into his wall-bound relief sculpture-like creations that can be rightly categorized as assemblages or, more aptly, constructions. These works sometimes look like abstractions of pieces of architectural details or circuit boards of old radios or computer motherboards at other times.

Isturis has had five solo exhibitions, the latest is at Oval Gallery in Abilay Sur, Oton, titled Mariit; Reflection on Nature, Respect, and Harmony.

The word mariit in Hiligaynon generally means “enchanted” or, specifically, “dangerously enchanted.” The term is used to describe a place that is inhabited by nature spirits or elementals. One must be extra careful in places traditionally believed to be mariit: mountains, hills, forests, rivers, lakes, seas. The term also applies to describe seasons or periods that are believed to be occasions when malevolent spirits are on the loose.

In this exhibition, Isturis mainly latches onto folklore while asserting once again his skill as a sculptor and painter in the style that he has been developing and mastering as an artist. He did this by creating several iterations of a theme, idea or subject.

In the mold of his previous sculptures in wood, for this exhibition, Isturis made a series that depicted several versions of the gulgol – land elementals with big heads associated with abundant harvests, lush forests and animals. Each gulgol sculpture bursts with geometric patterns that heighten its textural qualities.

But there are also sculptures of other folklore characters that Isturis gave form to by assembling skeletons or bones and horns of different animals. The fish sculpture Kugtong is created using carabao horns and cow jaw bones with teeth, while the serpent or dragon that is believed to cause eclipses, the Bakunawa, is made from deer antlers and goat skull. These works are confirmations that creative and resourcefulness are not strange bedfellows.

His wood relief sculptures like Ulo de Maligno or the triptych No See No Hear No Speak are menacing and may elicit fear among other emotions not because of the scary images or subjects they represent but mainly because these works are also potentially strong socio-political statements.

In two painted wood reliefs, the artist provides his version of the art subject artists have done ad nauseam, the mother and child. The two pieces, both titled Mother Diwata (2025), are not about human mothers based on how Isturis presented them. Rather, they are images of Mother Nature with the artist effectively capturing her complex character through her facial expression – a benevolent mother not hesitant to demonstrate tough love when displeased by her child’s behavior.

His series of paintings done in 2022 specifically Bakuwang, Kugtong, Karawang etc are portraits of different beings and creatures that stress their being other-worldly. These small paintings are reminiscent of some of Negrense artist Nunelcio Alvarado’s figures between the mid-1990s to early 2000s that critique social condition or even his later works showing mainly geometrical anthropomorphic faces. They also closely resemble the kachina dolls of the Hopi people of North America, and the malangan masks from Papua New Guinea. Whether these have inspired Isturis is disputable, but the theme that is being intimated by these paintings overlaps with the spirito-cultural intentions of these traditional creations from these distant locations.

But Isturis’ idea of mariit goes beyond the traditional perimeters and parameters of the term. In what may be considered experimental compared to his other sculptural works, he created a series using books and readymade masks and wrapped them in various colored pieces paper. To complete the configuration, the artist made them wear cheap sunglasses. Facebook/Dynastic Profile (2025) as the pieces are called, protest against the damaging effects of social media on people. Here Isturis transposes the idea of “enchanted” or “dangerously enchanted” from nature to new technology and contemporary life.

Isturis also made several wall-bound assemblages in line with the mariit theme but built around the subtheme of memory. One wonders whether the artist is insinuating that nostalgia is enchanting and dangerous in Puerta de Memorias Door of Memories (2025), created using an old cabinet door, and in several others such as Old House Old Love (2025), inspired chiefly by windows made of capiz shells in houses of old.

Overall, while curatorial editing may be useful for this exhibition, Mariit affirms Isturis’ good grasp of his medium and technique. It also shows the breadth of his appreciation and understanding of folk culture and beliefs.