Filipino painter Benedicto Cabrera, better known as Bencab, will return to Singapore this summer for a month-long residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute. Now in his 60s, Bencab is one of the best-known artists from the Philippines, and I’ve had the opportunity to interview him several times over the past few years. Most of his work is based on a life-long interest in the plight of migrant workers, the impact of colonization and the theme of servitude. One of his inspirations was a homeless, deranged woman called Sabel, who used to scavenge from garbage cans around his neighborhood. Clad in a flimsy dress, she would wrap plastic sheets around her body that would billow around her with the wind. To this day, the images are still imprinted in the artist's memory and Bencab has been regularly revisiting her portrait since he started the Scavenger Series in the '60s. He has a strong collector base (most of his STPI works in 2005 were sold before even being shown).
If you want to know more about this artist, I wrote this interview in the IHT in 2005.
Also take a look at this article on Immigrant Art in Readers Digest from2008, which was part of my six-part series on contemporary arts in Asia.