Artist Statement
Marika's works explore playful interrogations and intimate obsessions with femininity. Rooted in personal experiences and visual culture, these approaches to appropriating sexualized form challenge the dominant language of femininity and our perception of women and bodies. In feminizing visual forms from the immense to the most intimate, she challenges gendered power structures and opens space for dialogue, re-imagination, and reclamation. Within the intervening and transformative ability of collage, the works recontextualize the female experience, transforming what was once overlooked into a visible and cultivated source of power.
Artist Bio
Marika Callangan (b. 1990) is a visual artist whose work explores how images can be interrogated and feminized to reclaim perceptions of the female form and femininity. Her practice elevates the feminine as a transformative force that recontextualizes lived experiences and perceptions so that marginalized experiences and concerns of women are made visible as embodied sites of agency and self-definition.
Through vibrant femmages that shift between the digital and the analog, often taking the form of collages and found objects, her new works expand these media by incorporating feminine traditions such as textiles, embroidery, beadwork, and appliqué. She is exploring the intersections between archiving and performance to create more embodied feminist interventions through visual art.
She is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines. In 2023, she held her first solo exhibition at ANIMA Art Space. Other participations include group exhibitions such as Art Fair Philippines 2026, Improv Art Gallery, Parola–UP Fine Arts Gallery, 98B Collaboratory, Cartellino Gallery, Everything’s Fine PH, and Art in the Park PH. In 2024, she expanded her practice internationally by exhibiting at the Taipei Art Book Fair, her first international art convention.
She is a member of local artist collectives, TLYR Collective and Manila Collage Collective. She designed the book cover of Lilia Quindoza Santiago’s ‘Kritika Feminista’. Some of her notable artist-brand collaborations include Everything’s Fine PH, Shake Shake PH, dm-drogerie-markt Germany, H&M Philippines, Bonifacio Art Foundation, Inc., Booth & Partners Philippines, MONKI, and Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA). She lives and works in Metro Manila, Philippines.