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).

sudlikama

sudlikama

Decolonial Minimalism Founding Work (Culture - Habi)

Size: 1400 x 1400 pixels

Medium: Digital Art

Artist: IJWBAA

Year: 2025

Description:

Sudlikama by IJWBAA channels the spirit of indigenous symmetry and sacred repetition into a bold chromatic abstraction. The vertical composition—red motifs mirrored along a black spine, flanked by yellow and red fields—evokes the ceremonial precision of Sudlikama, a traditional tattoo and textile patterning practice rooted in Visayan and Mindanaoan cultures. Each diamond interlock becomes a mnemonic stitch, a visual chant of ancestry, protection, and identity. This is not ornament—it is archive.

Sudlikama, in its original context, encodes lineage, status, and spiritual resonance. IJWBAA’s digital interpretation reframes these codes through geometric clarity and color theory, transforming the body’s canvas into a visual infrastructure. The central black stripe becomes a spine of memory, while the red diamonds pulse like ancestral echoes. The flanking yellow and red fields suggest both radiance and resistance—an invocation of the body as sacred terrain, marked not for beauty alone but for belonging and survival.

This artwork resists decorative framing and instead asserts Sudlikama as a living archive of indigenous knowledge. By translating tattoo logic into digital symmetry, IJWBAA honors the practice’s mnemonic power and its role in movement-building. The piece becomes a visual prayer for cultural continuity, reclaiming pattern as protest and symmetry as sanctuary. Sudlikama is not just a design—it is a declaration: of rootedness, rhythm, and radical care.

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