Nona Garcia, Illuminated at National Gallery Singapore

17 Feb 2022

Baguio-based artist, Nona Garcia’s Illuminated held at National Gallery Singapore as part of the ongoing Gallery Children’s Biennale 2021, features four life-sized landscape backgrounds which transport children into an other-worldly space. 

Illuminated is a continuation of Garcia’s works using x-ray, where she employs a collection of x-rayed bones, shells, fossils, and different life-sized landscape backgrounds for young children to participate in image-making and storytelling. 

With an array of intriguing x-rayed objects as magnets, children are able to observe the inherent patterns within nature and are encouraged to create their own sceneries of imagination. This physical version of Illuminated is an extension of the online work which you can recreate here.

Garcia probes into the essence of things, setting up a dichotomy between the transparent and concealed, framed and natural, the sublime and the everyday. Her fascination with x-ray images began as a child when she spent much of her time at the hospital where her parents worked. Nona uses X-ray images of organic objects to form intricate patterns and designs which feature in her series of lightbox and window-based installations. In 2013, she moved to the mountainous region of Baguio City and began creating works inspired by the surrounding landscapes.

Gallery Children’s Biennale is ongoing at National Gallery Singapore until December 2022.

Image: Illuminated by Nona Garcia for Gallery Children’s Biennale 2021: Why Art Matters, credit to National Gallery Singapore