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In Conversation With Artist Pepe Delfin About Her Exhibit, "A Bird, A Cage, A God of Flowers," at MONO8

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<div style="text-align:center"><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:700px"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1755435380943pepe delfin exhibit a bird, a cage, a god of flowers at MONO8.jpg" style="width:700px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/><span class="fr-inner">Artist Pepe Delfin | Photo courtesy of MONO8</span></span></span></div><div><br/></div><p>With the weight of an entire year’s worth of work, <strong>Pepe Delfin</strong> has been crafting something that turns the cold precision of geometric abstraction into a vessel for warmth. Her latest solo exhibition at <strong>MONO8</strong>—<strong></strong><strong></strong>&quot;<strong>A Bird, A Cage, A God of Flowers</strong>&quot;—reads like an unspoken diary of wounds where its pages are left open for viewers to see themselves and shift their focus from the cause of the trauma to the silent endurance of living with it.</p><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>The narrative behind the canvas </strong></div><p>The seed of this exhibition sprouted in the shadow of Pepe’s previous show titled &quot;<strong>Look at Me, Hari Seldon!</strong>&quot; which explored the concept of freedom and choice. After the thematic expansiveness of that work, Pepe turned inward and wanted to trace the edges of freedom to see where it frayed. “I like my shows having connections with each other. I thought of like, ‘Where to go from freedom?’ and then I thought maybe I can go with what limits our freedoms—and I thought of fears,” recalled the artist. </p><p>From there, Pepe dove into a research process that blurred the lines between curiosity and confrontation. She devoured horror movies and true crime stories, read literature on how such narratives are made, and sat with survivor testimonies she had encountered in safe spaces through her works. </p><div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1755435618022PEDE157-image.jpg" style="width:700px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/></div><p>“I wasn&#x27;t entirely sure what direction I really did want to go for, but I just started drafting the works anyway. So, the process was kind of intuitive. I just let myself visualize what I had with me so far, and as I was creating the works, I realized that the way I process what I had consumed…my brain went to the violence often portrayed in these kinds of stories,” Pepe Delfin told <strong>Metro.Style</strong>.</p><p>It was during this intuitive drafting stage that Pepe stumbled upon a poem by Mary Oliver titled &quot;The Kookaburras.&quot; In it, she found the metaphors of bird, cage, and god of flowers that became her exhibition’s name. “The poem is about how there exists two states in a person, a state of being afraid and also a state of being courageous. [It] was also about the desire for liberation… if you couldn&#x27;t be a god of flowers to yourself, be the one who opens the cage and introduces the [bird] that&#x27;s stuck to the world outside,” Pepe explained. </p><p>Still, the subject loomed like a storm cloud. Wishing to approach it with care, Pepe consulted a psychologist, saying, “I knew that this was going to be a very heavy topic to present in public. And what I wanted to do was to be very careful with it because trauma-informed care also means not triggering people who have experienced it.” Their conversations helped her frame the exhibition through the lens of trauma-sensitive practice and guarantee an experience that would resonate without rattling the audience.</p><div><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1755442618662artist pepe delfin - mono8 exhibit - A Bird, A Cage, A God of Flowers 2.jpg" style="width:700px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/></div><div><br/></div><p>Rather than replicate the violence she encountered in these narratives, her process distilled these influences into something more oblique. Pepe translated them into landscapes of trauma—the abstract terrains of torment and the slow work of surviving. “I didn&#x27;t at all want to focus on the ‘what happened.’ The focus of the exhibition is more on how a person carries the pain, the grief, all of these things—and how strength comes in different ways and perhaps how help also comes in different forms,” she clarified. </p><p>Instead, the show leans into validation and, as a mirror, one in which viewers might see fragments of themselves refracted through the crisp lines and layered colors of her geometric abstractions.</p><div>On what she wants the viewers to take home, she said simply, “For people who find the works speaking to them, I hope they feel seen. I hope that they feel the same amount of comfort and validation I felt when I encountered the stories of survivors like me. I want this gentleness to spread to people.”<img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1755443199777PEDE150-image.jpg" style="width:700px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/><br/></div><div><strong>Speaking in geometry and inviting vulnerability</strong></div><p>In her words, abstraction is the visual language best suited for this subject matter: “I thought that the language of geometric abstraction would be a good and careful way to express these different experiences and emotions and psychosomatic things that happen.”</p><p>While it can be accused of coldness and its precision mistaken for detachment, Pepe is aware of this tension and works deliberately to invite vulnerability into her forms. “I don&#x27;t know if I do inject vulnerability into it, but I like to think that it invites vulnerability,” she admitted. </p><p>“I&#x27;ve always insisted that the works that I make and what they mean for me, they&#x27;re not set in stone. I actually like it when people interact with them and put their own meaning to these works. I believe that whenever I make something, as soon as I finish it, it doesn&#x27;t belong to me anymore. It belongs to the world,” Pepe added.</p><p>This openness makes her geometric works strangely porous. Viewers might see a fractured bird, a robotic figure, or a figure crawling out of darkness. Pepe embraces these multiple readings, expressing, “However people take the works, I welcome it. So, if they see themselves in a picture and see it a certain way, even if it&#x27;s hugely different from mine, I welcome it.”</p><p>“I absolutely love hearing people interpret the works, and I love people showing me what they see. Things that I don&#x27;t see myself or haven&#x27;t seen myself until they told me about it. I like that. I love this very open conversation about the works. I think that&#x27;s how vulnerability shows in work. It invites it,” she divulged. </p><p>Although trauma underlies the show, Pepe refrains from literal storytelling as it offers a kind of emotional diplomacy. “This show is not autobiographical in any way. The show is more on what I understand of the experience of trauma. Some of it is personal, but also it&#x27;s hugely inspired by the stories of survivors whom I had the honor of being an audience for their stories,” she pressed.</p><div><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1755443644686artist pepe delfin - mono8 exhibit - A Bird, A Cage, A God of Flowers 3.jpg" style="width:700px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/></div><div><br/></div><div><br/></div><div><strong>An artist before she knew it</strong></div><p>Asked when her journey as an artist began, Pepe smiled and gave a winding answer. The story stretches back to her childhood, where creativity lived in make-believe games and improvised toys. “Back then, I didn&#x27;t know that what I was doing was the act of creation. As a very imaginative child, I really like playing pretend,” she reflected.</p><p>Little Pepe used to make maps for her Polly Pockets, turn cigarette boxes into miniature houses, stitch together neighborhoods and props for different things and dolls. “I think that&#x27;s when I started making art. Even though I didn&#x27;t know that that was going to be something I would end up doing as an adult,” Pepe said.</p><p>That instinct for world-building has followed her into adulthood. Now, her studio is a space where research, intuition, and structure coexist. Before painting, she reads voraciously—fiction, nonfiction, articles—without the pressure to make it art. “I just do it because it&#x27;s fun,” said Pepe.</p><p>“When something strikes a chord with me, is significant, or something that really resonates with me, I take note of it. I put little notes in my phone, have a notebook, list some things down. Really just half-baked things. I gather those. Then eventually, I would need to access them,  take a look at all of these things that I have,” she revealed, adding how she would weigh them, whether she could expand them in the future. </p><div><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1755443850648Studio II.jpg" style="width:700px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/></div><div><br/></div><p>As for her creative process: “It really depends on where I&#x27;m at emotionally and what really comes out strongest for me. That&#x27;s how it usually starts.” Once the drafts are complete, Pepe shifts into a disciplined 10-to-6 studio schedule where she pre-measures everything from colors to compositions to proportions. </p><p>“I do my drafts on my computer, so everything is pre-measured. I know which colors to use and how to mix them up to the last milliliter or gram. Then by the time I have to start painting, it&#x27;s really just like not much thinking involved. It&#x27;s just the fun act, physical act of putting something on canvas,” she told Metro.Style.</p><p>If Pepe has a compass in her artistic journey, it’s curator <strong>Gwen Bautista, </strong>whom she calls her mentor. “She&#x27;s really helped me refine my process a lot, make it more sustainable. That&#x27;s why I mentioned the part about research earlier, because that was one of the most valuable insights or advice that she has given me. She told me that anything can be researched. She even used Ariana Grande as an example,” uttered Pepe.</p><p>That freedom from rigid methods has made Delfin’s creativity easier to access, giving her permission to see inspiration everywhere. It also helped her navigate the emotional terrain of this exhibition, finding tenderness in geometry and empathy in structure.</p><div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1755444153607PEDE152-image.jpg" style="width:700px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/></div><p>“That was really nice because then it made things feel more natural. When I wanted to think of things, of shows or things to create, it felt freeing. It made my creativity, I guess, much easier to access. Because there wasn&#x27;t this rigid rule of how to research and ideate for art. I guess, you can just find it anywhere when you look close enough and if you pay attention,” she remarked.</p><p>That sense of in-betweenness runs deeper than her compositions. Pepe holds two homes in her heart: Manila and Capiz. Being far from one makes the other “sparkle more,” she said. The push and pull of longing finds its way into her art, which often occupies the liminal space between meanings.</p><p>After such a monumental project, Pepe is determined to permit herself to rest: “I&#x27;m really consciously doing my best to also give myself a break, to feel that I do deserve rest and that rest is also part of this process, that it&#x27;s not something I have to earn. It&#x27;s something that I need,” she noted. </p><p>While she will continue working, she sees downtime as essential to replenishing her creative reserves. Pepe put it, “Of course, I still have to work because in this economy, we have to. I guess self-care is important. Nothing is worth sacrificing oneself over. So, I&#x27;d love to do that—sincerely rest. Perhaps it&#x27;ll refresh me enough to find something, to find some new ideas to work on in the next bit.”</p><div><br/></div><div style="text-align:center"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1755444434328Installation View I.jpg" style="width:700px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/></div><div style="text-align:center"><br/></div><div><strong><em>&quot;A Bird, A Cage, A God of Flowers,&quot; a compelling new exhibition featuring the works of Pepe Delfin, is on view at MONO8 until 27 September 2025.</em></strong></div><div><br/></div><div><em><strong>For more information, contact MONO8&#x27;s Media Team at inquiry@mono8gallery.com and +63 9627248131 on Viber/Whatsapp. MONO8 is located at BLK 113, 53 Connecticut, San Juan City.</strong></em></div><div><br/></div><p>Photos courtesy of <strong>MONO8</strong></p>

<p>In this Metro exclusive, Pepe Delfin laid down the emotional blueprint behind her “A Bird, A Cage, A God of Flowers” exhibit at MONO8.</p>

In this Metro exclusive, Pepe Delfin laid down the emotional blueprint behind her “A Bird, A Cage, A God of Flowers” exhibit at MONO8.

Pepe Delfin Reframes Pain and Trauma Through Geometric Abstraction in Her New Solo Exhibition

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Pepe Delfin Reframes Pain and Trauma Through Geometric Abstraction in Her New Solo Exhibition

Leigh Sofia Lazo

Published August 17, 2025 10:30 PM PHT

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Updated August 17, 2025 11:30 PM PHT

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