A chair doesn’t speak. It doesn’t cry. It doesn’t write letters or whisper goodbye.
But in JM Ginete’s thesis exhibit, Empty Spaces: A Series of Multimedia Artworks Surrounding Loss, the chair says everything.
And it says it without a single word.
The exhibit is a quiet, deeply personal exploration of grief, absence, memory, and the unspoken love that often lives within the things we leave behind. But it didn’t start that way.
“Originally, I proposed a thesis about grief and loss,” JM recalls. “But my panelists asked—how would I know what I’m talking about if I’m not a psychologist?” So she shifted her focus, grounding the work in her own language as an artist: materials.
“I explored how different art materials can carry the emotional weight of loss. That’s how I ended up building the whole exhibit around chairs—because in my research, the chair is one of the most universal symbols of loss.”
Think about it: a chair once used and now left empty already tells a story. It has a memory. It has presence.
1. “Meeting Death with Grace” (Watercolor)
The first chair belonged to her grandmother—who, at 100 years old, still sits in it.
“She’s very casual about death,” JM shares. “Sometimes over breakfast she’ll say, ‘I want to be buried here when I die,’ and we’re all caught off guard. But to her, death isn’t something to fear.”
To represent this calm and open-hearted acceptance of death, JM painted the chair in watercolor, a medium known for its soft transitions and gentle transparency.
“It’s light, calm, and fleeting—just like the grace with which she embraces the idea of death.”
2. “Outgrown” (Ink)
This piece features the beloved chair and toys of JM’s 6-year-old niece. But instead of using watercolor, which is often associated with childhood, JM chose ink—permanent and unforgiving.
“Once you make a mistake in ink, you can’t erase it. You just have to own it. That’s how I see childhood—it’s the foundation of who we are. We grow through our mistakes.”
The chair in this piece isn’t a symbol of absence just yet—but of inevitability. A child will one day leave her toys. One day, that space will be quiet too.
3. “The Last Coat” (Oil Paint)
The third chair belonged to JM’s late biological father, who passed away last year. It now sits unused, slowly rusting in a home in Batangas.
“He used to repaint that chair constantly—always keeping it looking new,” JM says. “But when he died, no one repainted it. That was his last coat.”
Rendered in oil paint, the medium mirrors the nature of grief—slow to dry, lingering, difficult to cover up. What once was routine maintenance has become preservation. The silence his absence brought is still heavy in their home.
4. “Unthanked Hours” (Charcoal)
This chair belonged to JM’s foster father—a man who, since 2006, raised their family alone after her foster mother died. Unlike the others, this chair has no objects, no added detail—just grime, wear, and time.
“He poured everything into this family, but I never really thanked him,” she reflects. “It wasn’t until I was drawing this that I realized how invisible he’d become in my eyes.”
The use of charcoal, a medium known for its rawness and impermanence, emphasizes both the labor and the quiet neglect that often go unnoticed in acts of love.
5. The Installation: “Presence in Absence” (Video & Found Object)
In the final piece, JM places a worn household chair beneath a looping video projection of her family—sitting, talking, moving. Their audio plays: snippets of daily life. For a moment, the chair feels occupied again.
But when the video fades, the chair remains—silent, unmoved, touched by life yet empty.
“The strands of hair, the dents, the worn fabric—those are real. Those are what remain after presence becomes memory.”
It’s a stunning conclusion to a deeply reflective series: a tension between memory and material, between being there and being gone.
Empty Spaces doesn’t ask for pity. It doesn’t shout about sorrow. It invites you, gently, to sit with absence—not to wallow in it, but to recognize that loss doesn’t always come in death. Sometimes it arrives quietly—in change, in growing up, in silence between words never said.
“This is my way of honoring those who filled these spaces—whether they’re gone or still here. This is how I say, ‘You mattered.’”
And through these chairs, these quiet vessels of emotion, JM Ginete gives voice to the unspoken stories that live all around us—often where we last left them: in the stillness of an empty seat.