Jao Mapa’s religious artworks trace a visual pilgrimage deeply rooted in the familiar, textured, and grounded rituals of his hometown, Antipolo. This is the city of the Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage, where devotion winds through narrow streets in processions thick with candle smoke, whispered prayers, and generations of belief. These moments—small, solemn, often unseen—surface in Mapa’s work with quiet clarity.
Though known to many as a former actor, Mapa has long committed himself to painting. With a Fine Arts degree from the University of Santo Tomas, he shifted his focus to art full-time, drawing from a visual discipline shaped by Catholic tradition and personal experience.
His 2021 piece Prusisyon (30 x 50 inches, acrylic on canvas), last shown at Dry Brush Gallery, captures a sea of stylized figures surrounding the image of the Virgin during Antipolo’s annual procession. The forms blur slightly, echoing the slow movement of a crowd seen through smoke and devotion. Mapa isn’t chasing realism, but rhythm and collective motion. The painting doesn’t dazzle—it draws you in, like a steady beat or a familiar prayer.
That approach carries into Dungaw (24 x 36 inches, acrylic on canvas), which portrays a brief encounter during the Quiapo Traslacion—the meeting of the Black Nazarene and the Virgen del Carmen. The palette is spare. The figures are reduced to their essentials. Yet the space between the two images feels charged, as if the city pauses at their passing.
During the lockdown years, Mapa turned inward. In Pieta (36 x 29 inches, acrylic on canvas), Christ slumps over Mary’s lap—not radiant or idealized, but heavy, human. The textures are rough, almost primitive. There’s a rawness to it that mirrors the fear and grief of that time. It doesn’t aim to comfort. It simply holds the moment.
Another work from the same period, Scourging at the Pillar (48 x 33 inches, acrylic on canvas), is even starker. Christ’s back is turned, marked with gashes and wounds. There’s no dramatization—just pain rendered in thick strokes. It’s direct and unsentimental.
In his more recent pieces—small portraits on paper, each 12 x 18 inches—Mapa returns to familiar images: Señor Nazareno, Santo Niño de Tondo, Virgen La Naval, Virgen de Antipolo. These are done in bold colors and loose lines. They recall estampitas—those devotional prints slipped into wallets or tacked onto family altars. There’s an intimacy in them, like something meant to be held, not displayed.
What stands out in Mapa’s work is not spectacle, but presence. His paintings don’t call attention to themselves. They stay close, like a companion on a long walk or a prayer repeated quietly at the end of the day. They don’t try to make the ordinary sacred. They show that it already is.
As processions return and churches slowly fill again, Mapa’s paintings serve as quiet reminders: faith doesn’t always look miraculous. Sometimes, it just looks familiar.
