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).

t'nalak

t'nalak

Decolonial Minimalism Founding Work (Culture - Habi)

Size: 1400 x 1400 pixels

Medium: Digital Art

Artist: IJWBAA

Year: 2025

Description:

T’nalak by IJWBAA translates the sacred dream-weaving of the T’boli people into a rhythmic digital abstraction. The dark brown field anchors the composition like abaca fiber, while the red and white zigzag motifs ripple across the base like ancestral chants. Above them, alternating dots and diamond glyphs evoke the spiritual visions that guide the weaving process—each mark a mnemonic echo of the dreamscape. This is not textile—it is trance, memory, and movement.

Traditionally, t’nalak is woven by T’boli women known as dreamweavers, who receive patterns through sleep and intuition. IJWBAA’s abstraction honors this sacred process by distilling its essence into geometric symmetry and chromatic restraint. The zigzag becomes both thread and thunder, while the dotted rhythm suggests breath and ritual. The composition resists commercial framing and instead asserts t’nalak as a living archive of indigenous cosmology—where every line is a lineage, and every pattern a prayer.

This artwork reframes t’nalak not as artifact but as mnemonic infrastructure. By translating dream logic into digital form, IJWBAA invites viewers to witness the weave as a spiritual technology—one that binds land, ancestry, and imagination. T’nalak becomes a visual invocation: of feminine power, ecological intimacy, and the sacredness of dreaming in color and code.

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