Christine Santos

I come from a long beautiful lineage of Filipino descendants. A lineage that has gone through various transitions and experienced cultural influences by many empires over the centuries. Myself being a by-product of those transitions as I am a fourth generation Filipino-American. With that, it is safe to conclude that I am not sure who I am. I can create a list of attributes and characteristics that I embody; what I like and dislike. Though, I am not sure if that truthfully describes Who I Am. What I am curious to unravel through art and design is my identity and multidimensional being. Likely to be continuously inspired by nature and my loved ones along the way.

What does "liberation" mean to you? What does it look like, sound like, feel like?

I often observe myself gravitating towards the trail of thoughts around liberation as I recently came to realize the lack of it at a very young age. I remember feeling confined/boxed in on all levels of the mind, body, and spirit. A multitude of first-hand traumas that I can now identity as moments where I retreated and developed undeserving behavior patterns. A mix of choices that I have made and universal fate that I am not resentful of anymore. As I am new to defining liberation beyond what the dictionary tells us, I find that it takes courage to acknowledge your inner experience and to be curious enough to ask why this comes up for you. To be okay with leaving your conclusions and rationales open-ended as it will most likely come up again. To dive into self-study but to also remain soft and compassionate. Liberation feels like holding space for everything while showing up authentically in the world.

Is your creative practice one of liberation?

Limitless. Being creative is so expansive and can be integrated in everything that you do. If I were to describe my experience into a percentile pie chart: 80% “Limitless Exploration”, 10% “Determination for Refinement”, 9.999% “Intention Setting”, 0.001% “Caring what people will think”

How can art be a tool in the revolution?

My first exposure to watching someone's creation process was with my Lolo(grandpa in Tagalog). He would hand paint banners for family gatherings in light of the celebrant. He paid attention to the details of the letters, shapes, and composition. They were simple yet nuanced. When these banners made their way to my family gatherings, it was implied that they were a special offering as the reaction of my family members were always positive and appreciative. From these observations, I regarded Art to be an innate practice of intergenerational liberation and healing that goes beyond spoken communication. Such as that Art is an embodiment of energies that are not always acknowledged by our dominant systems and conditioning in motion. In fact Art challenges them and our roles within them whether you are aware of it or not. Art is one of the many inherent gifts we have as humans and it is my hope that we evolve to reclaim/harness more of it. Our liberation is bound to Art.

Share a little bit about your creative process!

I try to carve out time for creative things at least 2 - 3 hours a day or research about creative things. What is really profound about any creative medium is that you can learn so much from what others are putting out there. You commend others for their work as you know its energy is deep. To always practice gratitude for the other creatives out there, making beautiful things happen.

https://www.behance.net/christinesantos @uwakcreative