Cassi Paguio

I am a Filipino artist working in a variety of disciplines, including painting, illustration, sculpture, installation, digital art, and marine photography. My work ranges from the realistic and representational to the highly surreal and conceptual. I draw inspiration from Filipino colonial history, mythology, and literature, exploring cultural identity from a decolonized perspective. Through traditional portraiture, I seek to represent Filipino Morenas in contrast with the frequent appearance of European women in Filipino classical art. My most recent work is influenced by many years of experience as a certified rescue scuba diver and underwater photographer. The work focuses on marine data I gathered from multiple tropical coral reefs, which will be explored through a series of large-scale oil paintings. In addition to depictions of the ocean, I like to push the boundaries of human interaction with water and explore water in different aesthetic forms.