Inside the Liberal Arts Campus Art Gallery lies a room illuminated by a TV, where on screen a video of a girl brandishing a lighter, watercolor paper, an aluminum tin and soil.
This video, part of the 2023 Long Beach City College Student Art Exhibition, is much different from the traditional art pieces hung on the walls.
Death to old you, hello new me is what artist Ash Pangelinan described in her poem she incorporated in her performance art piece ‘Release’.
The piece is an homage to the death of her old self and welcoming a better version of herself through the act of a creative yet powerful self expression.
Pangelinan described the process in her performance as releasing her old habits and negativity fueled with past traumas and creating a better, evolved version of herself.
“I’m a lot more confident, I love myself so much more. For the past six years I was in a relationship. I don’t think I was a human, I was a shell and since then I have been building myself up very slowly. It takes time,” Pangelinan said.
“I was very nervous when I did this piece. I didn’t think people would resonate with it. But I did it, and I’m so happy and proud of myself for not allowing the fear to stop me.”
Abraham Pacheco, a photography student and admirer of Pangelinan’s work noted some of his favorite aspects of her piece.
“I love it. When I look at the screen she looks like she is in pain ripping the paper. There’s these little things that she does where it almost hurts her to do it, which I understand would hurt me too,” Pacheco said.
“There’s this creation and destruction aspect of it. From destruction comes perfection.”
Everything, including her dress and each item present in the video had personal symbolic meanings to Pangelinan.
“This performance piece signifies death and rebirth. I wore all black because I was attending my own funeral. All of the lives that I have lived and want to release, I’m releasing,” Pangelinan said.
“The red tape represents blood, and the cyanotype that I used was pictures of me and portraits of myself. It was me bonding myself together. That was what the ripping up and putting back together represents.”
Pangelinan recites her poem in a stern, direct voiceover throughout the video as a way to urge her to rip up the watercolor paper.
She then takes the lighter and burns each piece as it is put into an aluminum tin and buried in soil, which she sourced from her great grandmother. Soon afterwards the pieces are put back together with red tape, signifying rebirth.
“The voice in the background was me guiding myself through the process. I’m moving myself through the healing process,” Pangelinan said. “It’s so funny, I don’t speak to myself very nicely. When I do talk to myself it’s very stern.”
This metamorphosis-like art performance inspired Pangelinan to change for the better, as she said the heart wrenching breakups both platonically and romantically catapulted her to immerse herself in art and photography, resulting in her release art performance.