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).

panubok

panubok

Decolonial Minimalism Founding Work (Culture - Habi)

Size: 1400 x 1400 pixels

Medium: Digital Art

Artist: IJWBAA

Year: 2025

Description:

Panubok by IJWBAA transforms traditional embroidery into a chromatic code of resistance and rhythm. The alternating white and blue squares, intersected by a bold yellow line, evoke the meticulous stitchwork of Panubok—an indigenous Visayan embroidery practice rooted in ancestral memory. Rather than thread and textile, this digital abstraction uses geometry and contrast to simulate the pulse of pattern-making, where each square becomes a mnemonic stitch and the yellow line a narrative spine.

Historically, Panubok carries stories of lineage, land, and labor—often stitched by women as acts of devotion and documentation. IJWBAA’s reinterpretation resists ethnographic literalism and instead channels the emotional and symbolic logic of the craft. The checkerboard rhythm suggests repetition and discipline, while the yellow line disrupts and connects—like a motif passed down through generations. The composition becomes a visual chant, echoing the cadence of hands that stitch memory into cloth.

This artwork reframes Panubok not as artifact but as infrastructure: a living archive of indigenous knowledge, encoded in shape and color. By translating embroidery into digital form, IJWBAA honors the practice’s mnemonic power and its role in collective legacy. The piece invites viewers to see pattern as protest, stitch as story, and abstraction as a form of cultural continuity. Panubok becomes not just a design, but a movement—radiating care, precision, and ancestral presence.

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