Chloe Caday’s, Flowers of the Divine, Ylang-ylang, is part of her latest series, Diwata’s Song. Tracing back to pre-colonial Philippines, Chloe Caday retells stories of her motherland through Diwata’s Song, honouring her culture that is deeply rooted in folklore and mythology. Within this exhibition, Caday focuses particularly on the diwatas—spiritual beings that guard and nurture forests, caves, land or bodies of water. As a result, the paintings are a culmination of stories about these goddesses of the moon, stars, waters and sunrise, stories of forbidden loves, midnight mystique and the peculiar allure of flowers in bloom.

In the town of Tayabas, Ilang was known to be the most beautiful. Adorned by many, she gave her heart to a poor farmer, Edo, and though her parents forbade her to marry him, they would secretly meet by the water in the forest to see each other. When her parents found out, she was forbidden to leave the house, when she became weaker and sick. Before she died, she told her parents to bury her in the forest near the stream where she and Edo met. Edo tended to her grave every day, where one day, he noticed a small plant with strange blossoms that emitted the most aromatic scent. 

Chloe says of her work: “The Flowers of the Divine paintings are based on the Filipino folk stories of forbidden lovers who continued to pursue their love until death. A story of passion, resilience, and purity, the flowers have become a prominent symbol of their love rebirthed back into the earth that continued to blossom time after time. Long before the Spanish colonisation in the Philippines, and the widespread of Western/Catholic ideas, it was commonly believed that the spirit of the departed would be reborn back into the earth – such as a flower, butterfly, moth, or a dragonfly. This belief continues to remain a sacred part of Filipino culture surrounding the afterlife, and its stories such as these hold the power to reconnect the modern world with history retold by not the colonists, but by our ancestors and the people of the land.”