About

 

Woman Create, also known as Marika Callangan, is a collage artist, muralist, and maker based in Manila, Philippines. Her work explores themes of identity, transformation, and deconstructing femininity to offer a more authentic representation of the female experience.

Vibrant, dynamic, and fleeting, she weaves narratives that are surreal and fragmented, and speak to the instability of our patriarchal foundations. Her works echo a limitless identity, always in motion, journeying and transformative for every woman.

Before transitioning as a full time artist, she self-produced a local yearly creative planner, 365 Wonders from 2015 - 2019. She supports women’s rights and grass-root feminist movements, often initiating non-profit art events throughout the years, which have included workshops, performances and active group conversations that provide safe spaces for women and opportunities for their expression. 

In 2020, she first participated in a group exhibition with Arts Talk PH entitled, “Hindsight is 20/20.” During the pandemic, she spearheaded an #ArtforMedPH fundraiser, using collage commissions as a means to raise funds for frontliners in select public hospitals in the metro. This led to a virtual exhibition in 2021 with ArtDrop PH, “Coming Again: Returning to Creativity, Steps to Courage.” 

During the same year, she was selected by the Bonifacio Arts Foundation, Inc. to translate her collage "Nurturing Ubuntu" as a mural in Bonifacio Global City, the heart of public art in Metro Manila, in support of their public art campaign, "Rolling Out a Better World." At present, she continues to create feminine murals for various clients and organizations.  

In 2022, she began exploring Barbie imagery to produce works that reflect post-colonial identities and deconstruct beauty ideals. This led to her first solo exhibition in 2023, "Life in Plastik" at ANIMA Art Space, which was coupled with a feminist collage art workshop centered on Barbie and her effect on Filipina women.

Coming from conservative, post-colonial narratives, Woman Create continues to study feminism and its reflection in Philippine society to further inform and develop her work. 

  

 VIEW MY WORKS IN FULL HERE >

 


The Story

Woman Create explores themes such as identity, transformation, and feminism to offer a more authentic representation of the female experience. 

This tale in Art begins in darkness. 

In 2015, I grappled with being diagnosed of Endometriosis, a chronic gynecological disease in the reproductive system, which made me question my very value as a Woman. As life happened, my identity fell into an abyssal vortex, which somehow led me  to Art. This was how Woman, Create was birthed. 

Woman Create began with an intention to meet a need - specifically the need for women to express, to create, but ultimately, to take the next step into courage. In the process of making Art, a discovery was kindled: that art could be a beacon of hope, a means to connect and an invitation to story. Our selfish act of creating becomes communal, shared to the point that the making and giving of art is, at its core, a selfless act.

Woman Create aspires to tell and reclaim the stories of women through collages, murals, and functional design wear. Intrinsic in each work are deeply rooted feminist values and ideals, hinged on the divine.