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Liste Art Fair
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Fffriedrich
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Grace
Paulina Caspari, Munich, Germany
2025

Amalgamation of Tenderness
Liste Art Fair, Basel, Switzerland
2025
Artist's Room: Augustine Paredes
 Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, UAE, 
2024
Yearning The Sun to Fall
Fffriedrich, Frankfurt, Germany
2023
Light, Leaks
Foundry, Dubai, UAE 
2023
PARADISE4EVER
Gulf Photo Plus, Dubai, UAE
2022

Grace

Paulina Caspari
Munich, Germany
2025



Installation view of Grace at Paulina Caspari, Munich, Germany.

Curatorial Text
by Anna Bernice delos Reyes

What are the aesthetics of grace?

Grace is an act of submission to divine mercy, an act of relinquishing control to natural or divine forces that are often invisible. For his first solo exhibition at Paulina Caspari and in Munich, Filipino artist Augustine Paredes inquires into the physical manifestation of grace, revealing the visual language of material when allowed to make an image of its own. In this exhibition, the artist embodies grace as a poetic inquisition of his relationship to materials that have threaded through his artistic practice.

With a practice rooted in photography and image-making, Paredes questions the post-colonial identity of a Filipino in diaspora through different appropriation of artistic mediums, indigenous materials, and historical narratives. Paredes’ artistry — traversing through the Philippines, United Arab Emirates, and Germany — is marked by a perpetual questioning of desire in light of migration, identity, and longing. Paredes’ affinity to the poetics of materiality, with the chemistry of analog film as a starting point, unfolded into his explorative use of and historical research on Piña fabric. A delicate textile from the Philippines made from pineapple leaves fibers first introduced by 15th century Spanish colonizers, Piña is embedded within the artist’s continuous inquisition of colonial influence on the Filipino identity.

Grace is a continuation of his series, Amalgamation of Tenderness, first presented at Liste Art Fair 2025. Here, the Frankfurt-based artist focuses on material: investigating its tensions and capacities, using the concept of ‘grace’ through the materials’ reactions to time, light, and heat. In these works, the artist pushes himself against the practice of artistic control, letting these invisible elements autonomously leave their visible marks.
Using research as a starting point in his artistic process, Paredes explored antique stores in Frankfurt and Heidelberg to uncover deteriorating old, unused films as well as printed photographs and frames. Paredes also traveled to Banisilan, North Cotabato in the Philippines to uncover decaying photographic family archives from the 1970s to 2000s — lingering evidence from the artists’ conflict-ridden homeland. Paredes observed how the passage of time, complimented by prolonged exposure to heat and light, have changed form, markings, ink, and image manifestation. The back of a photograph ages gracefully through time, creating unique browns and yellows.

When an image is overexposed, parts become white: though a vignette remains. Likewise, Piña fabric, when burnt and ironed, creates a haunting, yellowing mark. His experimentation with these discoverings manifest themselves in the artworks in this exhibition.

For Paredes, to ‘age gracefully’ is a soft resistance, a revolution against decay; and yet, no matter our resistance, time, light and heat still yields its force; decay still occurs. In the context of Catholic beliefs and practices, also central to Paredes’ practice, grace can likewise be seen as a parameter for morality, a faithful belief in the invisible divine. Through these works, Paredes expands a wider inquiry into the state of grace: a way of being that traverses from resistance to eventual submission. Grace is letting go, a submission to what we cannot see or control. Grace is surrender.

Exhibited Works
Hold me close, keep me standing (Bastidor) in four parts, 2025
Fire-stained pine wood
130 x 200 x 200 cm
Lovers I & II (23 Years in Between), 2025
Edition of 2 + 1 AP
Scanned Instax wide film expired in 2002, digital print on enhanced matte paper, UV Protected acrylic glass, aluminum frame
82 x 62 cm
Soft Sun, 2025
Ink and fire stain on silk, damaged Instax wide film, waxed thread, embroidered Piña, ink-stained pine wood
90 x 90 cm
Quiet Moon, 2025
Ink on silk, embroidered Piña, ink-stained pine wood
90 x 90 cm
Wait in the fire, 2025
Bees wax and burn mark on Piña, lace trimming, and silk
40 x 50 cm
Soliloquy, 2025
Charcoal and burn marks on Piña and silk, mounted on wood panel
32.5 x 36 cm
Everything that ever moved will eventually be still, 2025
Burn marks on embroidered Piña, distressed and burnt silk
170 x 70 cm

Cooking Adobo at the Hea(r)t of 25.2048° N, 55.2708° E

Art Dubai
Curated by Munira Alsayegh
2019

Cooking Adobo at the Hea(r)t of 25.2048° N, 55.2708° E

Cooking Adobo at the Hea(r)t of 25.2048° N, 55.2708° E is a series of self-portraits aimed to materialize how I was shaped by the span of time I have lived and worked in Dubai. This work aims to introspect on questions like “where are you from,” and the violence that comes with it.

While it is a project which questions relationships between a developing multicultural city and myself, it is all the more a journey inwards into where one belongs and what it means to isolate oneself in shared spaces — preserving the sense of home, cooking for one and surviving the everyday.

Amalgamation of Tenderness

Presented by Paulina Caspari
Liste Art Fair
Basel, Switzerland
2025



Installation views of Amalgamation of Tenderness at Liste Art Fair Basel, 2025

Exhibition Text
Courtesy of Paulina Caspari

"Amalgamation of Tenderness” is a new body of work by Filipino artist Augustine Paredes, exploring different poetics of identity, vulnerability, and desire.

Inspired by the Piña fabric's importance to the Philippines' history and the post-colonial Filpino identity, this collection of new multi-media works are images and paintings based on photographs from the artist’s family archive from the conflict-ridden Mindanao, layered with different fabrics and trimmings sourced in the Philippines such as Piña and Cocoon Silk. 

For the stand concept for LISTE 2025, the exhibition design appropriates the framing technique of Filipino embroiderers from Lumban, Laguna where wooden frames are wrapped with scrap fabrics to create a protective layer for the Piña fabric before it is stretched and made ready for embroidery. This frame is called “Bastidor,” and it is made to protect the fabric from unwanted scratches and tears. 

The Piña fabric has become an integral material for the artist. Piña fabric—a delicate textile made from fibres of pineapple leaves—was introduced by the Spaniards during the 15th century and became a symbol of Filipino identity. During the Spanish colonial era, the fabric was cultivated and woven by local artisans to meet the demands of both indigenous traditions and colonial elites. 

For Paredes, the Piña fabric symbolizes the perverse tenderness that comes from violence; and through the material's opacity, he can imbue new ways of ruminating conceptions of concealment and revealment. 

In some of the works, Paredes also appropriates the “Calado” embroidery, a distinctive feature of the Filipino traditional wear, Barong Tagalog. In this embroidery technique, fibres are taken out to decrease the fibre count, and the remaining intact fibres are woven into various open thread work patterns. However, Paredes uses fire to burn parts of the fabric and embroider the outlines of burn marks.

In LISTE 2025, this booth exists as a stage for his works where Paredes laments the violence of colonization while also celebrating resilience; as material and metaphorical layering carry the weight of post-colonial identity, reflecting the complex and multi-layered Filipinos. The works inherit the awareness of and the critical engagement with historical legacy, while on the other hand releasing an (artistic) potential to open up to a collective language and legibility through personal openness and vulnerability.



Exhibited Works
Delicadesa, 2025
80cm x 100cm

Ink on cocoon silk, acrylic on Piña, burn marks and ink on chiffon, pencil on gesso, burn marks on silver gelatin prints, lace trimming, waxed thread
Devotions, 2025
87cm x 133cm
Acrylic on piña, oil on canvas, ink, charcoal, and burn marks on chiffon, linen, waxed thread, burn marks on silver gelatin, woven fabric, poem on paper, lace trimmings, silk thread
Mañanita, 2025
82cm x 102cm
Ink on embroidered cocoon silk, acrylic on Piña, laser print on Pinyapel, burn marks on silver gelatin print, burn marks and ink on chiffon, lace trimmings, charcoal on gesso, waxed thread
Quiet Moon, 2025
Ink on silk, embroidered Piña, ink-stained pine wood
90 x 90 cm

Paraluman, 2025
54cm x 44cm
Piña, Cocoon Silk, Oil on canvas, acrylic on canvas, Lace trimmings, lace, chiffon, Ink-stained pine wood artist frame
I want you to live forever, 2025
33cm x 66.5cm
Oil on canvas, oil on wood panel, lace trimming, silk ribbon, inkstained beech wood
Periphery, 2025
100cm x 100cm x 6cm
Ink and charcoal on chiffon, embroidered Piña, lace, lace trimmings, ink stained beech wood
In an embrace,
2025 75cm x 38 cm
Oil on wood panel, lace trimming, ink-stained beech wood
Perpetually, 2025

100cm x 100cm x 6cm Acrylic on canvas, burn marks and ink on chiffon, silver gelatin print, imitation pearls and burn marks on abaca fabric, Piña, lace trimmings, ink stained beech wood
Every thing that ever moved will eventually be still, 2025
170cm x 70cm
Burn marks on embroidered Piña, distressed and burnt silk
Prayers for a Good, Good Boy, 2025
65.5cm x 121.5cm
Oil on silk, piña, burn marks, lace trimmings, laced beech wood artist frame
Singkil, 2025
54cm x 44cm
Piña, Cocoon Silk, Oil on canvas, acrylic on canvas, Lace trimmings, Ink-stained pine wood artist frame

Artist's Room:
Augustine Paredes

Curated by Dawn Ross

Jameel Arts Centre
Dubai, UAE
2024


Installation views of Artist’s Room: Augustine Paredes at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, UAE. 2024.

Curatorial Text
by Dawn Ross

Augustine Paredes’ artist’s room his relationship to identity and family. Focusing on his personal journey as a migrant – constantly navigating between time, places and identities – the works delve into the complexities of his own experiences and the enduring effects of colonialism. 

Augustine’s practice has primarily centred on photography. Gradually moving away from the camera as a main source of image-making, he has embraced a more process-based approach that focuses on the inherent qualities and agency of materials used within his work. This shift has led him to reconnect with his own history and memories, while confronting the challenges and violence he’s endured as a migrant. 

One central work in the exhibition, Mother—a portrait of Marife, Augustine’s mother—is an important figure in his life that embodies his connection to home and sense of belonging. Other works present traces of burns, verses of poems, paintings, ink stains, fibres, pearls and wool threads. Together, these works explore the artist’s reflections on guilt, desire and devotion. 



Exhibited Works

Light, Leaks

Foundry
Dubai, UAE
2023


Installation views of Light, Leaks at Foundry, Dubai, UAE. 2023

Exhibition Text
Courtesy of Foundry

In photography, a light leak emerges as a technical mishap, a rift permitting uncontrolled light onto film or sensor. In his second solo show in the UAE titled “Light, Leaks”, Augustine Paredes explores accidental anomalies, triggering memories of flawed pictures and contemplations of the essence of light.

Inspired by an archive of failed images, Augustine begins his process by initially painting a figure, then smearing several layers of oil paint over it, as if taking a picture, and because of an error, the afterimage becomes devoid of reality.

More than a catalogue of flaws, this series is a narrative illuminated by happenstance, offering portals to forgotten memories and musings, interlacing desire and somnolence. The leaks blur the lines between intention and chance, capturing the interplay of unintentional illumination. This work is an invitation to gaze at a beauty born from coincidence and challenges the confines of creative precision.
Exhibited Works

Yearning The Sun to Fall

Curated by Anna Bernice delos Reyes

Fffriedrich
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2023


Installation views of Yearning The Sun To Fall at Fffriedrich, Frankfurt am Main, 2023.

Curatorial Text
by Anna Bernice delos Reyes

 In Greek mythology, Icarus lives imprisoned in a labyrinth with his father, and both attempt to flee on makeshift wings. To survive their flight, Icarus is instructed by his father to glide just between the sea and the sun, lest he drowns or his wings get burnt. Icarus disobeys his father, ultimately flying too close to the sun, burning his wings and drowning.

Much like Icarus, the migrant body is always in a state of departure, constantly caught in a state of rebellion and defiance. For his first solo show in Germany, Augustine Paredes embodies Icarus’ story as a way to understand the plight of the brown migrant body. He ruminates on the remorse of departure, and the apologies we feel compelled to make to the loved ones we unwillingly leave behind. A migrant’s choice to leave is both a selfless and selfish act, motivated by the potential of providing a better life elsewhere.

Augustine’s new body of work — which includes paintings, manipulations of printed photographs and objects, video, and stills — incarnates the visual language and imageries of Icarus’ myth, exploring its materiality and textures. Augustine discovers resonances between Icarus’ story, his own narrative of constant departure, the collective solastalgia of migrants — to understand the sorrow and longing of leaving.

Yearning the Sun to Fall questions what it means to depart, to escape, to betray, to leave (someone) behind, to shapeshift, to fall, to drown, to bear the weight of guilt — in pursuit of a speculatively hopeful future.
Exhibited Works
If I must fly, let my wings be embers, 2023
Burn marks, Oil and acrylic on canvas, chiffon
Flightless, 2023
Burn marks, oil on canvas, lace, chiffon, photographic print
Obliterations, 2023
Burn marks on Silver Gelatin
BPD, 2023
Thank You, Sorry, 2023
When the sun writes, 2023

Paradise4Ever

Gulf Photo Plus
Dubai, UAE
2022


Installation views of Paradise4Ever Gulf Photo Plus Dubai, UAE 2022

Curatorial Text
by Raz Hansrod

 We begin in the Migrant Heart, a sacred refuge from detachment and displacement, a place to  confront an undying yearning. The heart is desire, and out of it flows Augustine Paredes’  reinterpretations of hallowed images and archetypes strewn throughout myth and history, echoing  countless human attempts to represent the eternal. 

These are Augustine’s investigations into our collective unconscious, grasping for an instruction, a  map, a recipe — anything to arrive at a promised Paradise. Through photography, painting,  collage, filmmaking, and poetry, he bleeds to visualize this longing and all who strive for it. 

Augustine reflects on the myriad ways we create our own idealised images of Paradise, mirages  of perfection that waver above mortality. Why do we look toward the heavens for guidance, with  stars as our compass? We are inevitably bound by time, so why seek a glimpse of Forever? We yearn for an eternity devoid of want, of hunger, of pain and loss. And yet, what we seek is an  oxymoron: without suffering, an eternal life is devoid of living.  

By burning images of his body, Augustine prays and repents to cleanse his sins and become a  shapeless vapor, rising towards the heavens. He implores you to peer into the Fire and seek the  paradise within, your reflection in flames, mirroring the Burning of the Bush. 

Left with a mound of ashes, Augustine casts his search toward the heavens, following the smoke.  In our naïveté, we create stories, tools and mechanisms to rise above our mortal coil, reversing  the Fall. And like Icarus, we fall again, broken and bloodied. 

Perhaps not flying, then. Augustine looks to his personal Madonna, his mother, as a window into  Paradise, and dancing through the portals of his loves, his losses, his longings — he realises:  Paradise lives, breathes, bleeds, and dies with us.
Exhibited Works