IJWBAA [eej-wah] is a Filipino digital artist and the first Filipino recognized in the Techspressionism movement. He is a neologist and the originator of Decolonial Minimalism—an art movement that reclaims minimalism through ancestral memory and cultural reawakening. His works, compiled in two volumes of I Just Wannabe an Artist, have been recognized, officially archived, cataloged, and made available in the collections of the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Museo Reina Sofía, the National Museum of the Philippines, Getty Research Institute, and other prominent cultural institutions worldwide.

Decolonial Minimalism by IJWBAA

Decolonial Minimalism

A Movement by IJWBAA

Founded: May 21, 2025

Date of Origination (first public appearance of the movement): January 20, 2025 through social media posts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter X, and a virtual exhibition on OncyberIO.

- The term Decolonial Minimalism was first conceived and rigorously cultivated by IJWBAA beginning in August 2022, laying over two years of sustained philosophical, aesthetic, and cultural groundwork prior to its formal declaration. In February 2024, the movement was given its definitive name.

History: Art Movement Historical Record

What is Decolonial Minimalism?

Decolonial Minimalism is a contemporary artistic and philosophical movement I founded to reclaim minimalism from its Western colonial heritage and reorient it toward Filipino and postcolonial realities.

It is a response to aesthetic erasure—an act of reconfiguring space, silence, and simplicity not as Western ideals, but as cultural memory, resistance, and ancestral presence.

This movement centers:

  • Indigenous Filipino memory and form
  • Silence and space as protest
  • Ritualized digital practice
  • Anti-colonial reinterpretations of modernism

It is not an art style—it is an act of liberation through restraint.

Manifesto

What happens when the colonized reclaim space?

1. We reject the purity of form when it denies our history.

2. We make sacred the silence left behind by erasure.

3. We embrace restraint—not as submission, but as resistance.

4. We claim minimalism not as subtraction, but as compression of memory.

5. We honor indigenous geometries, repetitions, and ritualized marks.

6. We use digital tools not to replicate colonial aesthetics, but to reframe our ancestral visions.

7. We mourn, we resist, we remember—with economy, with purpose, with fire.


We are the descendants of those who were once silenced.

Now we shape our own emptiness.

We fill it with memory, meaning, and the echoes of liberation.

We are not minimalists.

We are decolonial minimalists.

— IJWBAA

Provenance Statement

A full provenance statement establishing authorship, ethical framework, and usage guidelines for Decolonial Minimalism is available.

Join the Dialogue

If you’re an artist, scholar, or cultural worker exploring similar paths, I welcome collaboration, dialogue, and reinterpretation. Decolonial Minimalism begins with me—but it is meant to grow with others who carry the same fire. Use #decolonialminimalism on social media to share your work and be part of the conversation. Join our growing community on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Explore the full papers:

Manifesto of Decolonial Minimalism

Decolonial Minimalism in Art: Reclaiming Space, Silence, and Memory