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).

Pintados

Pintados

Decolonial Minimalism Founding Work - Culture (Symbols)

Size: 1400 x 1400 pixels

Medium: Digital Art

Artist: IJWBAA

Year: 2025

Description:

Pintados by IJWBAA translates the sacred geometry of Visayan tattoo traditions into a rhythmic field of black-and-white abstraction. The horizontal bands—triangles, diamonds, X-shapes, and V-motifs—echo the layered markings once etched onto the bodies of Pintados, the tattooed warriors of precolonial Visayas. These were not mere decorations—they were declarations of courage, lineage, and cosmic alignment. The composition becomes a mnemonic chant, where each shape pulses with ancestral breath.

Historically, Pintados bore tattoos earned through acts of valor, rites of passage, and spiritual devotion. IJWBAA’s abstraction reframes these marks as visual infrastructure: symmetrical, repetitive, and deeply intentional. The diamond bands suggest protection and clarity, while the alternating triangles evoke movement and duality—upward for aspiration, downward for grounding. The blank white base is not absence but pause, a breath between rhythms, a space for reflection.

This artwork honors tattooing as a form of embodied memory. Pintados becomes a chromatic archive of skin and story, where every mark is a mnemonic thread in the fabric of identity. IJWBAA invites viewers to see the body as canvas, the pattern as prayer, and the repetition as ritual. It is not just a design—it is a declaration of legacy, resilience, and the sacredness of being marked.

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