Characterized by his figurative expressionism, Rodriguez’s distinct works employ distortion and symbolism to visualize the increasing complexity of social malaise. Rodriguez’s observations of contemporary social problems are grounded in history, seen as symptoms and avatars of the continuing past. Looming nearer like a storm, the conquerors and investors commence the process of conquest.

 

The Second Coming of the foreign redeemer is heralded through the promise of peace and prosperity; here, a businessman clad in a suit and tie armed heavily, hover surveying the scorched earth and lifeless landscape in search of victims.

 

Excerpts by Lisa Ito for EnDevour exhibition by Iggy Rodriguez, organized by HOM Art Trans, Selangor, Malaysia, 2014

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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