“You begin with nothing and you end with nothing” – words of Mark Justiniani that shaped the contours of my thoughts as he spoke about the message of his work, Firewalk. A quieter truth of a statement which we often hear from Biblical scholars during a eulogy. Justiniani’s art are philosophical, scientific, historical, and mathematical invitations rather than mere aesthetes.

It was a long awaited moment, to meet and finally be in the same room with the celebrated Filipino contemporary artist alongside with his artistic partner, Joy Mallari, a highly respected and an equally resonant voice in Philippine art. They were in Iloilo to exhibit the bronze sculptures of Justiniani together with National Artist for Visual Arts BenCab in the show, Rhapsodies and Recollections, at the Iloilo Museum of Contemporary Art. 

The show comes with an art talk the following day. There was a stillness in the room as he spoke about art, concept development, and the art process of his popular installations that traveled in many parts of the world – The Settlement, Firewalk, and Arkipelago.

To infinity and beyond.

Justiniani’s talk on time and space, perception and illusion, and the use of mirrors and reflections evoked a mood of quiet contemplation. It deepened my ongoing exploration of void and nothingness—emerging themes in recent art exhibitions and conversations, highlighted by Les Amacio’s geometric abstraction and abstract illusionism paintings, featured in the newly-concluded Cultural Workers: Not Creative? Likewise, it resonated in Michael Lacanilao’s 31-minute documentary The Brief History of the Escherian Stairwell, screened at the UP Visayas Cinematheque, which used architectural illusion to explore our struggle to distinguish truth from deception in the age of social media.

Justiniani’s discussion on how we perceive color—using blue as an example—and his walkthrough of the Infinity Mirror series of immersive installations further expanded on the ideas of void and nothingness. This quickly brought to mind earlier readings on the work of controversial French artist Yves Klein, particularly his monochrome series known as the “Blue Epoch,” and his conceptual installation Le Vide (The Void). In that piece, Klein presented the Parisian audience with nothing more than a whitewashed room and a single empty display case, provoking curiosity, closer scrutiny, and widespread criticism.

Across his work, Justiniani spoke of mirrors, not only as tools, but also as metaphors. The way he described the nature of blue, for instance, and how it tricks the eye into a kind of distance, stirred something about how we perceive color, drifting the mind into the familiar terrain of our own inner inquiries—about absence, about silence, about the unseen edges of things we have acquired and around us.

The void is not empty. It is full of questions.

Justiniani’s Infinity Mirror installations expand this meditation. They seem to stretch space until it fractures into layers of time, of memory, and of self. 

Speaking in the Hiligaynon vernacular, he forges a deep and immediate connection to the narrative he presents in Arkipelago—a work that delves into his roots in Negros Occidental, the region’s social class dynamics, and the legacy of colonialism through education and religion—threading personal memory into the larger fabric of postcolonial narrative. The history is both intimate and systemic, full of echoes from a time we think we’ve left behind.

And then, Firewalk, which mirrors the arc of a life—my life, any life—so quietly, so insistently.

Compartmentalized into stages, it opens with a void. Not a dark one, but a beginning-place: soft, waiting, full of unnamed potential. From that unshaped silence, there arise toys, fragments of childhood—a metaphor for the architecture of becoming. Our playthings, our books, the scents of food, and the sounds of voices and of creatures from our surroundings that shaped our first attachments.

As he moved through the installation, it felt like I was walking through a memory like a deja vu or episodes I felt that I hadn’t yet lived. There were phases: learning, experimenting, comparing, doubting – it resonated with my personal experience. At one point, the floor curved and trembled, as though memory itself had become unreliable. Keepsakes appeared—some clear, others veiled in shadow—reminding me how selective our remembering can be. What we preserve. What we quietly erase.

Near the end: a pendulum and a violin. Time and tenderness. The inescapable rhythm of our passing, counterbalanced by the fragile music of our living. This is what Firewalk offers—not answers, but a ritual. A passage. An initiation.

A womb of reflection

“You begin with nothing and you end with nothing.” I hear Justiniani’s words again, and this time, absorbing it.

His installations are often labeled “spectacles”—grand illusions crafted from mirrors, glass, and light. But beneath that shimmer is something quieter. A deeper pull. They ask not just for our attention but for our willingness to question how we see, and more profoundly, how we are.

He doesn’t build from grandeur; he builds from silence. The void at the center of his work is not a vacuum; it is a womb of reflection, a space where new insights are born. His installations suspend everyday objects in stratified layers, as if excavated from memory itself is archaeology not of land, but of self.

Also read: BenCab and Justiniani sculptures spotlighted in Iloilo

It jolts you to find that old toy, that childhood photo, that book, that familiar flavor of food. You suddenly felt the voice of your mother and the words of your grandmother echoing in the background. Shedding the tears you haven’t shed for years – you felt nostalgia, melancholy.

There’s a certain mercy in that kind of work. A recognition that history, both personal and collective, is not linear. It loops. It repeats. It forgets and returns. Mark Justiniani reminds us that perception is not a fixed lens but a shifting one—shaped by myth, by science, by longing.

What I take away from his work is not awe, but quiet companionship. A reminder that beneath our daily distractions, there is always the mirror. And beneath the mirror, the void. And within that void, the echo of who we are—not in permanence, but in process. The burden of living. 

And maybe that’s enough.