Pagbuyá is a focal point of Marrz Capanang’s recently concluded 5th solo exhibition, Bioluminescence: Kaathag kag Kapawa. The painting and many of the pieces in the exhibition were an ode to self and to his mother, Magdalena G. Capanang, who recently entered eternal rest.

The 16-piece collection of paintings and sculptures was an allegorical reflection of Capanang’s advocacies and lived experiences. Seminal pieces highlighted the parallelism between mother and son—two lives woven together by affection and reverence. Their  day-to-day existence was enriched by chores, unspoken words, gentle gestures, fleeting expressions, and the warmth of touch—capturing a mutual struggle and sacrifice that shaped memory and legacy.

Kristine Buenavista — Capanang’s partner, a gifted writer, and lauded community worker — describes Bioluminescence as the most personal of his solo exhibitions.

Read: Marrz Capanang unveils 5th solo exhibition, Bioluminescence

Over the course of ten years, Capanang’s life and art carved a quiet path toward the sea, ultimately embracing the ocean. From the headwaters, it flowed gently—cascading calmly into the tributaries in Pangut-angut (February 2016), meandering through riverbanks and floodplains in Pasisiring (March 2018), and washing into a larger body of water in Panakayon sang mga Tinubo (November 2018). It then joined the thriving life of the sunlit epipelagic zone in Táhud (November 2022), slowly dissolving as it continued its descent—hauntingly—into the hadal depths, where bioluminescent life forms and otherworldly organisms flourish.

Capanang’s work consistently defies singular definition, blending science with poetry, the literal with the metaphorical, and the environmental, cultural, and personal with the mystical and ethereal. His canvases present the best of different worlds in a dynamic interplay that reflects his grounding in apophenia and animism, offering a profound exploration of transcendence and spiritual renewal.

Evocative of this temperament are works titled in the Hiligaynon language, which balance seriousness, wit, and virtue—such as the series of rotundo pieces Gaanaw nga Gahum sang Adlaw (infinite sun or overflowing power of the sun) and Lugdang (descending or sinking).

All of the works conveys the artist’s scientific, philosophical, and cultural inquiry, depicting his ongoing exploration of knowledge and human experience—studies of epistemology and phenomenology through art. His work offers more than a visual experience of the relationship between nature and humanity; it reveals the hidden dimensions of the human condition, prompting us to venture beyond the sunlit corners and into the darker chambers of the self.

Upon the passing of her mother, Capanang declared, “She is my life’s bioluminescence”—a literal and symbolic tribute to Nanay Magding, as she was affectionately called. She served as a living lantern in his life, providing a bioluminescent glow that shielded the family from the harsh realities of life in the poverty-stricken Calaparan village along the shoreline, a community shaped by both harmony and chaos, where people thrived in notorious vocations.

Revisit Marrz Capanang’s 4th Solo Exhibition Tahúd / Reverence 

​Four of the pieces retrace the overlapping destiny of Nanay Magding and the artist, forming the narrative of struggles and joys from birth to death—Pagbuyá (Drifting), Papiraw (Fade Out), Padálum, Padúlum (Deeper, Darker), and Kapawa (Enlightenment).

 

Pagbuyá, which can also be treated in Hiligaynon to mean “letting go,” symbolized Nanay Magding’s springtime age of parting ways with bucolic life in Guimaras to look for greener pastures and to find life’s purpose across the island. 

Her life since then would be typified by pagbuyá. At 35, she gave birth to Marrz, showing a natural process of pagbuyá, releasing the life she carried inside her womb, safe and close, her own blood and spirit echoing through it, giving it to the world who would claim him — slowly, then all at once, watching him grow, and learning the long, quiet art of letting go.

At 75 years old,“ despite her Alzheimer’s, she remembered me. And I remember her. This spiritual umbilical connection is a higher form of love,” he acknowledged.

But the time had come for him to confront pagbuyá, as the bioluminescent light of Nanay Magding pulsed faintly—papiraw—dimmed not only by age but by more than two decades of battling a stroke. She gently drifted into the abyss while glimpsing into his son’s orbiting in space and time, her light fading from view as if it had never been, yet remaining omnipresent—revealing green bones in the ultimate ritual of life’s closing.

Her spirit and memory now lives within him, moving through intuition and manifesting in his daily tendencies. Every moment since has found new meaning—in the arrangement of ordinary objects, the scent swirling in the air, and the clattering sounds of everyday chores.

Bioluminescence transcends the mundane and the trivial; it is both provocative and enchanting. In this landmark exhibition, Marrz Capanang plunged into the abyssal plain to illuminate the unseen world of the self—like an ocean revealing its hidden layers. Metaphorically, he leads us to the “Marianas Trench,” the deepest part of the ocean within ourselves. In this journey of Padálum, Padúlum (Deeper, Darker), he becomes Nanay Magding—our bioluminescence—guiding us through the darkness.

Photo credit:
– The photos were lifted from the Facebook post of Marrz Capanang.