The wildering wonders of BB Suralta

As a writer, BB Suralta calls himself a formalist. “Boo me!” he jests, confessing that it is through this style that he can wrestle his thoughts into sense. As a painter, though, he prefers to be untamed. “I’m a brut,” he says. “Painting lets me examine abstract or fragmented thinking, tapping into that elusive shapelessness that every artist hopes to achieve.”

He considers the two styles as partners in crime: abstraction stretches his imagination wide, while logic pulls it back into shape with structure and sense. 

When I inquired about his greatest influences, BB Suralta rattled off names from literature, music and cinema all at once. Jean-Luc Godard, David Lynch, Werner Herzog, Yoko Ono and Lady Gaga, among them. More broadly, he credits the German expressionists, pre-enlightenment mythology and the imagery of the Renaissance and Baroque. 

“It’s always part of the creative process, to be surprised by things, to exhume the old to apply a more contemporary lens. In the end, any artist worth his salt should reflect the times,” he says.

“Sometimes, you view things from a purely historical or anthropological perspective. Other times, you want to view things through the eyes of a child. Wonder is everywhere, but most people have forgotten where and how to look. Oftentimes, we find it in bankruptcy or the smallest, darndest, most trivial things.”

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If I may incur a small risk in saying so, artists are often the hardest to interview; understandably, because creatives would much rather be experienced through their work. The heart is already poured onto the canvas, what more could we possibly consume? His introspection was not mine to pierce, yet BB Suralta proved most generous in this discourse. 

In the middle of our conversation, he allowed me a glimpse into the pieces he holds with pride. In Rally for the Executioner (2025), there is a chained, three-eyed, horned head that is surrounded by an animal with multiple humanoid faces. “The way I see it is that monstrosity is often manufactured or contained,” he shares.

For lovers of mythology, Nasugbu Nocturne (2025) offers something at once familiar and startling. At first glance, I sheepishly surmised it was the Capitoline Wolf, but only in a manner that BB Suralta could devise: the creature has a human head and a vast blue chimera body. Suckling on its breasts are two golden childlike forms under a cosmic sky.

“I was thinking about the creation myths, maternal sacrifice and colonial nurturing through violence here,” the artist says.

“Some of my paintings are acts of postcolonial exorcism. Hence, the presence of Christian and occult iconography (crucifixions, halos, the Pentecost and sacred wombs). I try to twist these narratives into new mythologies. I want my art to ask: ‘What happens to faith, to myth, to love when filtered through centuries of occupation, indoctrination and violence?’ The answers aren’t always going to be neat.”

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When pressed about the first piece he truly considered his own, BB Suralta had a striking reply, his art was to keep in the making, but never after. 

“Once you finish a work, once it leaves the studio, it is not yours to keep anymore. It now belongs to everyone but you,” he explains. In the process, however, the art is essentially his. “I take ownership of every piece I have ever done, even the very bad ones.”

The artist says he never disowns his works and chooses to honour even those he considers flawed. “The actual creative process is never pretty (only in theory). Nor is it linear. Sometimes, there’s a dormancy, as well. And you must embrace these all the same. You must know when to ride out the waves, not just create them. Rhythm happens when all the waves know where they come from… and where they must go,” he says, echoing Lynch. 

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BB Suralta counts himself a late bloomer. “We can’t all be prodigies now!” he quips. More than anything, he values hardships and early stumblings that pave the way to greatness. “We often celebrate prodigies for their natural ‘genius’. But the ones who learnt to endure and be great, I hold a deeper affection for them. I hope to be as great as I ought to be. If I don’t, at the very least, I will try.”

The artist discloses that unlike most of his contemporaries, he was not raised in a creative household. His father was an overseas Filipino worker, while his mum had to juggle several jobs. “Art and those sorts of things were never encouraged at home, and the pursuit of such came later on. But I will always remember the small moments that shaped me.”

At this stage, he favours being perceived as an ‘absurdist’, a label that arguably hints at his unending curiosity in life and art. “I'm particularly interested in cultivating this radical anti-humanism; not in the nihilistic sense, but in the philosophical tradition that critiques the supremacy of the rational human subject. The subjects and compositions I create are porous, invaded and reshaped. Identity is multiple. Agency is compromised. And yet, within this horror, I strive to find an undercurrent of survival, cosmology and perhaps even redemption.”

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For every artwork, the artist asks the same of himself: that it be worthy of interest, that it holds enough intrigue to squeeze emotions. “I always say that there’s a big gap between good and great. But to me, the more important difference is the larger gap between great and interesting. Something great can be an incredible bore.”

Ultimately, BB Suralta invites us to take his works any way we please, but his art demands more than our eyes—it wants us to surrender to feelings. 

“[Be] happy, squirmish, spooked, terrified, unsettled, amused and puzzled. Just don’t look away,” he mutters.

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