Nikka Lindo and her Anamnesis

by Kathleen Crucillo

Memories are marked by impermanence. In our short lives, it is the recollection of our experiences that makes us. I’m certain that as you read this now, however your course of the pandemic life may be, the impermanence of life and things have influenced the decisions you make.

If anything, it has fueled us to make significant changes as we’re seized with the world’s irregularities. It is our memories that grant us a firm grasp on life. Our experiences, without romanticizing them, are all interconnected human traces, both tangible and intangible.

When we reflect on these tracks, do we also trace back its control over us? Does our mental mirror cut us both ways?

While ‘No Filter’ ushered us to observe the world in its original form, Nikka Lindo’s four-part piece Anamnesis in this issue calls us to observe anamnesis as memories experienced in its changing and ephemeral qualities.

“I see memories just as they are—a reminder of what once was. Even though my work depicts a moment that has passed, I do not mean to romanticize it as if I want to relive it. If anything, I am simply acknowledging the existence of that moment, no matter how short-lived it may be, and then surrendering it to the certainty of impermanence,” the 25-year-old painter explains.

“If it was a positive moment, I have something to gladly look back on. If it was a negative moment, I have a learning experience. Winwin,” she adds. Anamnesis I, II, III, IV demonstrate this concept with four portraits that symbolize the phases of life, the fragility of human memory, and life as postponed degeneration in a perspective of naturalism.

“With every second that passes we are older than we were. We fall sick and we grow tired. One moment we are happy, at another we are sad. A person who could mean the world to you could very well be a stranger in a couple of days, weeks, months, or years. How many phones have you gone through? How many pets have you outlived? Weren’t there more glaciers 10 years ago?” Nikka poses.

“All things are marked by impermanence. Some last longer than others, but the decline is an undeniable truth. This realization could very well make some say that life is insignificant before the inevitable reality of decline. But impermanence is not just the beginning and end, it is also what is in between. My work is founded on the desire for selfpreservation, albeit a futile endeavor. My idea of preservation, whether it is of the tangible or intangible, is simply postponed degeneration. Because of ephemerality, I’ve learned to shift my focus on the now; to live earnestly and learn as much as I can with the time I have here and hopefully leave as the best version of myself,” she adds.

Nikka, her brush, and the canvas

Having been engaged in paintings since childhood, one may think that Nikka was all set to pick up a brush, get to art school, and devote her life to creating art straight and simple. It sounds reasonable, except that isn’t the case.

Nikka’s journey to art had quite a slow start. She attended a medical-allied program before she was struck with the realization that her childhood hobby was, indeed, her lifetime passion. Her current bodies of work were the product of a lenient route.

“I’ve been drawing and painting ever since I was a child but I only did it because I could and had the means to. Honestly, my enrollment to an art degree was a spur-of-the-moment decision. But it was one made with zero regrets,” Nikka shares. More than what made her pursue painting, Nikka reveals with

us what keeps her pursuing the arts, years after earning her degree in Fine Arts.

“I loved listening to my professors’ 4-hour lectures, I loved reading about art history and theory, I loved staying up late to work on essays and paintings, I loved participating in talks and exhibits,” says Nikka.

“Ultimately, it was the four years of university that greatly influenced my art practice and made me realize that art is not just simply creating something, but creating something with the premise of active engagement. I still pursue painting because I have a lot to say, and I want people to reply,” she adds.

When asked about the originality of art, Nikka banks on the vulnerability in expression. She embraces the inevitable and human quality of imperfection. For Nikka, originality is a concept that the artist informs a piece of art as it conveys to its participants a physical manifestation of what was once abstract to their naked eyes.

Each subtle stroke of the brush is symbolic of the entire allegory of the body of work. Each hue is an idiom to a captivating but passing second. Like memories, the image that it leaves to the interpreter’s eyes impresses a thought and an articulate emotion that binds them to the different realities that have shifted through time. Judgment implored, vulnerability and meaning weighted to significance.

Being an active participant in several local art exhibits, Nikka combats the pandemic numbness by exploring digital art online and extending an outlet for digital artists to share their works on various social channels. At the onset of the 2020 outbreak, she teamed up with other local artists and organized an online exhibition called The Blue Pill Collective which continually aims to explore digital media in virtual space. She is also currently involved with Regional Art Forum+Community Art Archive’s Community Art Program, an all-year-round opento-proposals program of and for community art practices.

As someone who values her artistic role in society, Nikka embodies a social commentary and continues to establish her presence in the local art scene to encourage discourse and uphold community. The main purpose is to explore mediums that operate through human consciousness and how it relates to art.

To respond to the demanding pursuit to make time physical and preserve ourselves in figures and mementos that, if lucky, will span through time is an art. Nikka Lindo’s Anamnesis is a masterful revelation of life in phases—a conversation in the past, an overlapping of intervals. Our participation in it, as we carefully break through the fourth wall, is our reflection humanized within an accumulation of fragile seconds... fleeting and briefly gorgeous.

Milton H. Marquis

INTVW by Regie Vocales

Economics expert and esteemed professor Milton H. Marquis speaks with NRM about his perspective on human struggles in his book The Artifice of A Lady: A Novel of Redemption.

Find out more about his professional background, what he thinks of making his book into a movie, and why he writes about the human life cycle of inadvertent falls and redemption in a story of prostitution and survival.

NRM: When you wrote the book, were you seeing it potentially visualized on screens? What are your thoughts on realizing your book into a movie?

Milton H. Marquis: At the time I wrote The Artifice of Lady, I was not thinking of writing a story that could be turned into a screenplay. I was just interested in telling a good story.

I first began writing when I was thirteen after reading John Le Carre’s A Spy Who Came In From the Cold. While I never tried publishing any short stories or poems, I found it gratifying to see my thoughts and images turned into words on the page.

A few years ago, I was encouraged by a friend to take it seriously. I began to write in earnest. The Artifice is a third attempt at this book. Writing dialogue, giving the reader a ‘sense of place,’ and developing a compelling plot were lessons I had to learn. I read an interview with Joan Didion some years ago, in which she responded to a question about character development by saying that she had to ‘hear the voice of the characters’ before she could write about them. That was a helpful comment. It meant to me that you can’t hear voices that you’ve never heard. Television and movies are no substitute for personal experience. After I graduated from college (in engineering), fulfilled my military obligation, and repaid my college debts, I traveled for three years, doing odd jobs when necessary. I wasn’t exactly living the life of George Orwells’ Down and Out in Paris and London, but I did see some of the seedy sides of life. I also saw the natural beauty of remote areas, as one can find kayaking in Glacier Bay National Monument in Southeast Alaska or hiking the Chilkoot Trail into the Yukon Territory. I also experienced social conflict in the Middle East, as well as the stunning creations of mankind that leave indelible images in your mind, such as Michael Angelo’s David, or Gaudi’s cathedral in Barcelona. But it wasn’t until many years later, that the genesis of The Artifice began to form.

NRM: As someone whose interests are in Monetary Theory, Cultural Economics, and Macroeconomics, what prompted you towards writing a story about prostitution? Was there an event or someone you knew that inspired the story?

Milton H. Marquis: My professional interest in Economics didn’t have much to do with this book per se. It simply developed out of my personal experience working as a project engineer in the mid-’70s, when I could see how rampant inflation was having such a profound effect on so many aspects of our lives – and my job in particular – that I eventually found myself back in graduate school studying economics by day and bartending by night. In the end, my initial curiosity led me to spend several years working for the Federal Reserve in Washington DC and San Francisco and spending sabbaticals at the Bank of Japan in Tokyo and the IMF in Washington. That experience has allowed me to see another side of our society.

However, my academic job at Florida State University did afford me more time to travel. One summer I visited Berlin shortly after the Wall fell. The sights and emotions of the times that I, as an outsider, witnessed formed much of the backdrop for the opening of The Artifice.

NRM: If your book becomes a full feature, where do you think your story will have more impact? Why?

Milton H. Marquis: The fact that the book is in English probably limits interest within non-English-speaking countries. The setting my appeal more to Europeans, for that segment that is actively multilingual in their reading habits. I don’t have much information on English-language book sales in Europe. In terms of demographics, my guess is that interest may be somewhat higher for those who remember the events surrounding the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Soviet Union more generally. But. of course, this would likely only apply to those with an interest in the mystery/crime genre.

NRM: Although it is illegal and taboo in most countries, the sex and porn industries are still existent and consistent even to the point that some, if not all, view their jobs as noble and for a cause. For the sake of the non-readers, how does presenting your story about prostitution and redemption on screens immortalize or castigate these said industries? Milton H. Marquis: I do not think of the book as primarily about prostitution. While it evokes criminal figures throughout, the subtext is the lead character’s existential problem of survival in the Europe of her day. But, I was not intending to be philosophical. I just wanted to tell a good story. NRM: What are your final thoughts about movies and the oldest profession?

Milton H. Marquis: I don’t think much about prostitution as a profession. I tend to associate prostitution more with the troubling pervasiveness of sex trafficking, and the teenage runaways living on the streets in New Orleans, etc.

I would think that a movie version of The Artifice would not dwell on prostitution, but on the young woman’s entanglement in crime, and what she was willing to do to seek her own personal redemption.