At the Dinner Table

Dinner Table Conversation on the work of Maia Cruz Palileo between Michael Darling and Ashlee Jacob

The following is a transcribed conversation between curators/collectors Michael Darling and Ashlee Jacob, which occurred in April 2023 at the dining table in their Chicago home. Darling and Jacob are early supporters of Palileo’s practice, having been first introduced to their work in 2019. Seated in their dining room next to one of Maia’s early paintings that was acquired from their first solo show, Darling and Jacob discuss their early adoration of Maia’s work and what it means to have a stake in an artist’s success.

Michael Darling: So as a prelude to talking about Maia Cruz Palileo’s work, maybe we should clarify how we approach buying art. I love being there at the beginning of an artist’s career, similar to how I love reading debut novels. There is a thrill to seeing new voices emerge, and if I’m lucky enough to be able to bring an artwork into the house to live with it, it feels like I’m witnessing history.

Ashlee Jacob: I have artist parents who would trade with their artist friends so I grew up in a house surrounded by art. For me it just feels natural to want to have art surrounding me. I guess I want to recreate that energy on my own aesthetic terms.

MD: When we walked in the door of Monique’s to see Maia’s work the first time, during the opening of their solo show in 2019, we reacted instinctively to it. It was beautiful but we could also sense its importance and we both bought paintings that night. I didn’t know what it was about, but I wanted to learn.

AJ: I was drawn to the magical realism of the compositions and Maia’s particular alchemy of light. I also think the exhibition title, “All the while I thought you had received this,” gave us a contextual clue; for me, it implied a state of in-betweenness or a protracted journey, and how these experiences were part of a post-colonialist narrative.

MD: I felt that more complicated reading of the work came later for me, after reading about Maia, seeing more works by them. Living with the works too made them unfold and reveal themselves over time.

AJ: There are multiple layers to my appreciation: I liked it, I bought it, but I was also challenged by it. I was attracted to the spatial ambiguity of the work. In our larger painting, The Parlor (2019), light and space are very complicated.

MD: We’ve put that painting near a window where light comes in sideways which not only mimics the way light comes in on the right side of the painting, but it also creates changing light conditions throughout the day. We are sitting at our dining table looking at it right now.

AJ: We saw the reference photo for the deer in the painting in the exhibition catalogue, Long Kwento—a baby deer as a pet being cared for by two people.1 But in the painting the orientation of the deer is flipped—evidence of Maia’s use of cut outs and collages? We sometimes wondered if it was a dog, but the photo confirms where it came from. In the source image, I also noticed a tiled floor receding into the darkness which shows up in the painting as an interior. And what about the mysterious rope that stands on its own, like a coiled cobra? Probably also based on a detail from one of the archival photos they use?

MD: I was struck by the idea of “colonial haunting” in Justin de Leon’s essay in Long Kwento and this painting has that—a genteel white group sitting in a luxe interior, what looks a ghostly, perhaps Filipino personage appearing in the upper right, exerting itself on the interior.2 Not to mention the deer, perhaps a symbol of indigenous nature ready to reclaim this space? The ground plane of the floor is also disorientingly off-kilter which also gives the scene a sense of impermanence.

AJ: When I was young and staring at book covers long enough I would will myself to see things there—this painting does that for me too.

MD: Yes, it is impossible to exhaust this painting, it keeps on giving and giving. A hallmark of great art, no doubt. In fact, for me, Maia accomplishes that rare feat of technical mastery of their medium, sheer beauty that lures you in, and then really serious content that is both deeply personal and accessible. So many artists have one or another but rarely all three.

AJ: In that great Long Kwento, de Leon talks about silence as understood by the Lakota: silence is a place, a space to evolve and grow.3 That resonated with me. It also reminded me of something Julie Mehretu once said about the ambiguity of the blurred imagery she uses, that it creates the potential for futurity.4 I remember times when I would sit on my porch at night in Chicago and when I was silent and chill, I would start to pick up on so many different bird calls and communication going on above or below the flow of big city life. I find meditation difficult, but this idea of a generative silence seems like a way for me to tap into that, right?

MD: Yes, I love what happens when I achieve that stillness in meditation and what starts to emerge sensorially in that state.

AJ: In front of Maia’s new paintings, many of which are dense with foliage, I find myself getting lost and almost require quietness to penetrate them and appreciate them. You know that’s why I hate looking at art at openings! When my mom worked at the Terra Foundation when they still had gallery spaces, I was able to look at American landscape paintings when no one else was around and got to understand them in a way I never would have if it was during regular open hours with the general public.

MD: We attended a talk at the gallery with Maia and curator Kim Nguyen and we happened to be seated next to one of those big jungly paintings and were able to let it wash over us a bit. I sensed a really sophisticated mix of surface activity or foreground and then these tunnels of space that invite your eye to push deeper into the painting. Maia said that is an aim of theirs in the talk, and I always thought that was an important tool for painters to use to ensure a long and complicated digestion of the picture, one that not as many artists these days actually use.

AJ: So in addition to all that beauty you are talking about, there is a distinct political aspect to the work. Let’s talk about the concept of “reparative work” that Maia and Kim have spoken about.5

MD: Yes, part of Maia’s practice involves a lot of deep research, going to libraries and archives to see pictures and documents about the Philippines, especially ones describing the colonial imprint on the country. Those photographs and other ephemera are incorporated into the paintings, essentially bringing back histories that may have been forgotten through the generations.

AJ: Or that material shores up stories they have heard from their family and grounds it in a larger, shared Filipino history. But they have said that research is emotionally draining too, so much of what they found was deeply disturbing and violent, they became self-aware of “what being in an archive does to a body.”6 Maia is basically putting their body and psyche on the line to bring these stories forward and I feel very humbled and fortunate to even be witness to that work. It makes me hyper aware of your and my privileged position as viewers of this labor.

MD: Wow, yes, totally. Along those lines, Maia also said something powerful about their artistic practice, that “embodiment is everything” and “how do I digest it, have it pass through my body.” 7 That kind of approach really makes me think differently about their practice—this isn’t someone just making pretty paintings, it’s a hardcore and super serious cultural undertaking.

AJ: Yes, Maia’s work reminds me that history is non-linear and that there are multiple stories compacted on top of each other. But whose story is told and which narrator is prioritized are crucial to keep in mind.

MD: You are so right, that really comes through in the work. Thank you for that insight!