Artwork

Flight 2 - Alfred Marasigan /  by Tsering Frykman-Glen

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“Flight 2” (2019) is a gesture for the friends I made in Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art when I finally left for the Philippines upon graduating.

Wild Time 3 /  by Tsering Frykman-Glen

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Wild Time 3 - collaborative occurrence and livestream, 53 minutes (2019)

“Wild Time 3 is an entangling of myself with the nuances of kairos/Zeit/sandali where the historical canary in a coal mine acted as my guide. Wearing a gender-bent Tagalog formal dress with Cymbidium orchids in my hair, I wanted to perform an act of balancing feathers on charcoal branches to reinvoke the liminal space created by Serinus canaria domestica in early 20th century mines as part of Ulrike Mohr’s Wechselraum (2019) at 6-7AM in Meinblau Projektraum, Berlin. The element of respiratory danger, interspecies relationships, and momentary equilibrium present in such history and hopefully in Wild Time 1 reasserts the value of coexistence in space-time.”

Second Adolescence - Alfred Marasigan /  by Tsering Frykman-Glen

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Created from a workshop with artist Matthias Härenstam, “Second Adolescence” (2018) is my interpretation of the word “wound.” I saw much of my trauma emanating from my repressed homosexuality during my teenage years and found my current flamboyant behavior a late release of such impulses.

Menagerie - Alfred Marasigan /  by Tsering Frykman-Glen

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Menagerie is a project on the strangeness of displacement. Musikkpaviljongen is one of the oldest structures in Tromsø, Norway and I would like to think of it as a music box on the top of the world. I was inspired to create a sculpture that pays homage to the Tigmanaukan, a mystical creature from mostly Tagalog or Luzon myths in the Northern islands of the Philippines. In the beginning was nothingness and the Tigmanaukan, a giant cosmic bird that eventually got bored of the universe and pecked at the first bamboo tree. It split into two revealing the first man (Malakas or Strong) and woman (Maganda or Beautiful). A few 17th century naturalists have pointed to the Philippine fairy bluebird (Irena cyanogastra, a IUCN Red List endemic species) as the inspiration for this enduring creation story. 

The feeling of being displaced from my country has helped me rediscover my culture. Today, my sculpture features the actual cries of the Philippine fairy bluebird emanating from a fictional device that mimics a strange quality of being alive. Be they geographic, mythic, artistic, or personal, our stories ultimately animate us. 

2018 © All bird recordings were sourced from https://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Irenacyanogastra; bird footage from https://www.hbw.com/ibc/video/philippine-fairy-bluebirdirena-cyanogastra/male-foraging-berries. 

A Race of Angels - Alfred Marasigan /  by Tsering Frykman-Glen

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“A Race of Angels”

“golem”
Plastic bell jar, wooden base, and 3D-printed plastic figurine
10 x 5 x 5 in
2018

“juggernaut”
Aerial hoops, carabiners, cloth strap, and freestanding ostrich feather
3 ft diameter, 3 ft strap
2018

“behemoth”
Ink on rubber and balloon
11 in diameter, height variable
2018

“A Race of Angels” are three sculptural meditations on the precarities and wanderings of identity. Drawing inspiration from Franz Fanon’s famous quote, David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl’s painting via Twitter, the “cloud” as atmospheric and digital, my circus classes in the Arctic, and my own struggles as a Filipino, this collection attempts to distill, inscribe, and contain anger’s unlikely shapes.

Scientific Illustration /  by Tsering Frykman-Glen

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These images are a collection of illustrations and documentation from my first trip abroad to study Natural History Illustration in Newcastle (AU), 2012. One of my final requirements was to create a black swan composition.