(17) Looking at you, Looking at me

Mai Saporsantos is a contemporary artist whose paintings unravel dream antinomies nestled within the quiet comforts of everyday life. Her work transforms the familiar into charged, cosmic ironies—where domestic objects bend into symbolic forms and half-remembered visions emerge from the subconscious. Drawing from cryptic dream residues and emotional thresholds, Mai constructs cathartic narratives of whimsy that balance vulnerability and restraint, desire and consequence. Through layered imagery and painterly precision, she documents what she describes as a leap of irrational faith over the abyss of the absurd.

Mai received her BA in Art Studies from the University of the Philippines Diliman and further studied Combined Media Painting and Art in Three-Dimensions at the Art Students League of New York. As co-Director of Artery Art Space, an artist-run gallery in Manila established in 2014, Mai actively contributes to the Philippine contemporary art scene not only through her practice but also through curatorial and community initiatives. Across exhibitions locally and abroad, Mai continues to explore storytelling as an emotional excavation—where dreams become mirrors of both longing and reckoning.