IJWBAA [eej-wah] is a Filipino digital artist and the first Filipino recognized in Techspressionism. He is a neologist and the originator of Decolonial Minimalism —an art movement that reclaims minimalism through ancestral memory and cultural reawakening. His work earned a spot on the shortlist for the Hiiibrand Design and Illustration Awards 2024. His papers were published on Academia.edu.He was selected by David Quiles Guilló, Director of The Wrong, to participate in the 7th Edition of The Wrong Biennale - described by The New York Times as the digital world's answer to Venice Biennale - with Prayers to Ai, further cementing his standing in the international digital art community. His collected 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. The two volumes are cataloged in WorldCat under OCLC Numbers 1530632939(Book 1) and 1530636063(Book 2).

Isnag

Isnag

Decolonial Minimalism Founding Work - Indigenous People

Size: 1400 x 1400 pixels

Medium: Digital Art

Artist: IJWBAA

Year: 2025

Description:

Isnag presents two figures in chromatic dialogue—blue torsos, red accents, and striped garments—each rendered in elemental geometry yet resonant with ancestral rhythm. The larger figure’s semicircular red base and striped shorts evoke woven attire and ceremonial grounding, while the smaller figure’s necklace of white dots and red-blue headband signal ritual continuity and kinship. Their circular torsos and heads resist caricature, asserting presence through stillness and form.

The intersecting white lines across the light blue field are not decorative—they are mnemonic thresholds, visual scaffolds of inheritance and spatial memory. These lines anchor the figures in a shared cosmology, evoking both court and cosmos, play and protocol. Their positioning suggests companionship rather than hierarchy, a choreography of interdependence encoded in minimalist form.

Isnag is not abstraction—it is encoded ancestry. IJWBAA’s visual grammar refuses excess and reclaims essence, asking: what if geometry could carry ritual? What if chromatic restraint could amplify indigenous voice? This work offers a visual infrastructure for radical care, where every stripe, silence, and shape becomes a vessel for collective legacy.

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