On An Empty Room: “There was a time during the quarantine when i was so fixated on the past, on the what could've been this-or-that had this whole thing not happened. In the process of all the grieving about all the things i'm forced to leave behind, I also realized that I had obsessed over absolutely nothing. An Empty Room is my attempt to come to terms with things that are meant to be left behind, things that make no sense holding on to as we step into the big unknown. We still don't know what's on the other side of the door, there may be something. or nothing. whatever is there, the best thing we can do for ourselves is to drop all unnecessary weight and just keep going.

On There Must Be Something Out There: “With this piece, I tried to continue the narrative of facing the unknown, of saying goodbye to my hazy idea of the future that I had to cling on to for so long.”

Ches Gatpayat (b. 1995) is a collage-artist from Cainta, Rizal. She is currently undertaking her BA in Art Studies, with a minor in Sociology at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. Her works usually revolve around the theme of navigating through everything and nothing, all at once. Her process involves gathering and collecting all sorts of ephemera, photographs, and reading material, as an attempt to emphasize that everything that has happened in the past, could possibly happen again (and again).