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Jay Cabalu 'Snatched'

Snatched (2024) Hand-cut collage, vintage Canadian stamp, cubic zirconia stud and copper wire on wood panel 24 x 24 x 2.5 in

**Canada-wide shipping is available.

About Snatched:
During pandemic lockdown, I frequently encountered steller’s jays when I would go for walks. I began to see them as anthropomorphisms, representing my immature consumerist tendencies. In Bunso, I trace my relationship to consumerism to my childhood. As a young queer-Filipino immigrant, I was an obsessive collector of comic books and pop culture magazines, using them to escape feelings of alienation. This pattern of using material things to numb difficult emotions persisted into my adulthood, while its catastrophic effects on the environment and wildlife have become increasingly dire. Steller’s jays, known for their exploitive behaviour—frequenting campgrounds to steal unattended picnic items and even robbing nests—mirror an extreme consumerist mindset.

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Jay Cabalu is a Filipino-Canadian artist based on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations– Vancouver, BC. His works are made of 100% hand-cut collage as well as other found materials. He discovered magazines and comic books at a young age after his family immigrated to Canada in 1991. As a response to mass media and capitalism, Cabalu repurposes print media to create highly meticulous collages. In subject matter ranging from pop icons, self-portrait and still life, Jay's artistic practice has evolved over the past decade as critique and correction to the failures of media's attempts to depict his everyday reality. By reappropriating the visual language of advertisements and popular culture, Jay inverts depictions of pleasure and luxury to portray a collaged world overflowing with contradictions.