ARTS
Collage artist Cabalu looks at consumerist excess
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by Carlito Pablo
ancouver collage artist Jay Cabalu draws from a music video by Rihanna for the centrepiece of Extra, his first solo exhibit. In the video, the Barbadian pop star sashays in military-inspired couture, straddles the gun barrel of a tank, and wears a helmet with Mickey Mouse ears. Rihanna unabashedly sings: And I want it all / It’s gonna take more than that, hope that ain’t all you got / I need it all / The money, the fame, the cars, the clothes. From this, Cabalu created a collage called Savage Fenty (Rihanna), encapsulating what he wants to say in Extra, which opens May 7 at the On Main Gallery in Vancouver’s Chinatown.
“It encompasses a lot of what the show is all about in terms of excess,” Cabalu told the Straight in a phone interview. Cabalu explained that Extra is a show about capitalism-driven consumption and the resulting dominant culture of wanting to have “more and more”. In addition, there are “intersections” in that video for Rihanna’s 2009 hit single “Hard”. “It also brings to mind ideas of imperialism and war,” Cabalu said. The exhibition name Extra is, likewise, a “triple entendre to be taken literally”. It refers to newspaper special editions from a previous time, sold by paperboys on the street by yelling, “Extra! Extra!”
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Artist Jay Cabalu, here with his Savage Fenty (Rihanna) collage, holds his first solo exhibit, titled Extra, from May 7 to May 28 at the On Main Gallery in Chinatown. Photo by Marchel Eang.
“More recently, usage of extra was coopted into mainstream slang from AfricanAmerican vernacular English, meaning someone who is ‘over the top’,” Cabalu said. In exploring the world of consumerism, Cabalu emphasized that he took a route
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“somewhere in the middle of an indictment and a celebration”. “I think it’s important for me to be honest about the negative effects of consumer culture and excess but at the same time also be honest about how cool and pristine and sparkly and enticing the culture [is] as well,” he said. Cabalu said that he didn’t want to “detract away from how beautiful” many products and commodities are that are made for enjoyment. “I like the shininess of everything, and I want to include those images,” Cabalu said. “I want them to look luxurious while at the same time being critical and showing how damaging and destructive it can be. “As time goes on,” he continued, “people are becoming more inundated with images and media, all portraying excessive consumerism, while we are also depleting natural resources.” Cabalu adopted collage as his primary medium when he was earning his bachelor of fine arts degree at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. The art of putting together disparate pieces to form a new image spoke to his personal experience of growing up as an immigrant. Cabalu was born in the Philippines, and his family lived in Brunei for a time. He was a young boy when they moved to Canada in 1991. He made a lot of self-portraits between 2017 and 2019 as a way of exploring his own identity. “My technique just grew so much when I was making the self-portraits,” Cabalu recalled. g Extra runs from May 7 to May 28 at the On Main Gallery (427-268 Keefer Street). Opening reception is on May 7 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., with a limitedattendance artist and curator talk on May 14.
