Riza Manalo
Artist Statement // This unfinished wooden canoe was once owned by an artisan who had hoped to sail across the Coorong but passed away unexpectedly. Hence, this work is a homage to all the unknowns who did not make it.
The melted wax over the shrouded surface creates a cocoon that conceals it from view; a transitional vessel awaiting the birth of its new form.
The video’s three-layered body of water—the Pacific, Indian, and Southern oceans—merges to reflect the ephemeral nature of existence; a metaphor for time in which the present and the past are bridged by an unknown but often imagined future.
Riza Manalo is a visual artist who lives in the regional area on the west bank of the Murray River in South Australia. Manalo creates work that spans public performance, sound, video, and installation. In her research and practice, she examines the importance of artistic representation of lived experiences in understanding the production of social and cultural meanings in public space. Her practice has become increasingly focused on materiality and spatial sensing in relation to memory, body, and transitional spaces. Manalo is interested in arts-based participatory social research practice that reflects on shifts, transitions, and the condition of living between polarities of culture and geography and the nature of interstitial realities. She has been exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions since 1994. Her work has been shown in galleries and film screenings internationally, and in Australia. She has received a Master of Fine Arts in Art in Public Space and is currently completing her PhD in Art with a focus on spatial empowerment.
Alysha Herrmann writes about Riza Manalo in Neoterica 2024.
Riza Manalo, Homage to the Unknown (work in progress detail), 2024, 15 ft. cedarwood canoe, soy blend wax, unbleached cotton calico, dimensions variable, image: courtesy artist
