I Am typifies one the most famous fresco paintings The Creation of Adam by Italian artist Michaelangelo, which forms part of what appears in in the Vatican City’s Sistine Chapel. The image of the near-touching hands of God and Adam has become iconic of humanity. Iggy’s work may be interpreted as the artist’s own existential reckoning on how global oppression strike deep at the core of the individual’s being. Bodies are reduced to shells - ruins from the post-Apocalyptic aftermath of capital and imperial assault. Man become dehumanized extensions of humanity themselves. I Am offers a cautionary prophecy to all who encounter the work.

 

Excerpts by Lisa Ito for In/dependent States exhibition by Iggy Rodriguez, organized by Artesan Gallery + Studio.

Filipino artist Raoul "Iggy" Rodriguez has continually responded to a tradition of Social Realism and politically-engaged practice in Philippine art. He spent the mid-1990s as a member of UGAT Lahi, an artist collective making works for street and public protests in Manila. By the mid-2000s, Rodriguez’s individual work in painting, drawing and installation started to explore the iconography of oppression and sufferance: centering on the image of the body as an emblem for alienation, a staging ground and aftermath for struggles both material and exi….

 

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