Collection: Joey Simsim

Joey Simsim is an Ibaloi artist from Benguet and Baguio City. He is currently the president and founder of the Municipality of Itogon, a Benguet artist group named AGI (Arts Guild of Itogon), Inc.

He is adept at using oil paints in his artworks, showcasing his palette strokes and technique that combine realism with a touch of impressionism and surrealism. His artwork portrays depths and illusions derived from figures, natural objects, and the surroundings of his mountainous home, reflecting his unique style.

Joey Simsim casts a calculated look at the lost world of childhood, capturing the fleeting dreams of innocence in an act of visitation to a foreign, vanished world. It could very well be his own childhood that Simsim laments, bemoaning the shattered dreams that have engendered cynicism within him at such a young age. Is it a reproachful look? Is it an elegiac cry for the past? Is it a remonstration for unforgiven offenses that have refused to heal over time? No matter. As an artist, Simsim dutifully performs his role as a chronicler, narrator, and storyteller, with necessary detachment but also a tender regard for the interior child that resides within all of us. His works are bouquets of solicitude and redemption, aiming to recreate the essential stage of childhood, the most treasured phase of human life.