When art gives grief a place to be seen
Some visitors stood silently in front of the artworks. Others wiped away tears.
Inside the Far Eastern University (FEU) Institute of Architecture and Fine Arts (IARFA) Exhibit Hall, Of Angels & Julia was already becoming more than an exhibition. Visitors moved from one artwork to another, pausing to read Julia Buencamino’s poems and the stories behind the pieces. Some were visibly moved as they took in the work.
There was no speaker addressing the room anymore. No program was unfolding in front of them. For a moment, there was simply the artwork—and the emotions it brought into the space.
It was the kind of response that reflected what the exhibition hopes to create: a place where people can pause, feel, and connect.
At the center of that space is a deeply personal story.
A bench sits inside the gallery, surrounded by poems, drawings, paintings, and an origami tree.
At first glance, it may look like part of an art installation. But the benches carry something more personal: they were created from the memories, writings, and drawings left behind by Julia, whose death in 2015 led her mother, artist and mental health advocate Shamaine Buencamino, to begin a continuing conversation about mental health.
Presented in collaboration with IARFA Fine Arts, the Institute of Arts and Sciences Psychology Department, the FEU Guidance Office, and the Academic Affairs Office, Of Angels & Julia brings Buencamino’s paintings together with Julia’s poems, drawings, and other creative traces she left behind.
In his opening remarks, IARFA Dean Isaiah Israel D. Susi emphasized the ability of Fine Arts to create experiences that invite people to “see, feel, and think differently.”
For Susi, the gallery can become more than a venue for displaying artworks. It can become a space of reflection, conversation, and connection.
“Art has a unique ability to communicate what words sometimes cannot,” he said, describing how art can encourage people to pause and encounter perspectives on their own.
That purpose takes in particular meaning during Mental Health Awareness Month, as the exhibition creates a space where people can feel, seen, heard, and supported.
And for Shamaine, creating that kind of space is deeply personal.
A window into Julia
During the opening reception, Shamaine shared her hope that the gallery would become more than a place where artwork, poetry, and installations are displayed.
“My prayer is that this space does not just show artwork, or poetry, or benches, but it becomes a safe space for the students to come here and have a window into my daughter.”
Julia was 15 when she died by suicide in 2015.
Shamaine recalled how, at the time, she and her family did not fully understand the depth of what Julia was experiencing.
They thought she was being artistic. They thought she was simply being a teenager or going through an emotional period.
“We did not know the depth of her pain,” Shamaine said during the opening.
After Julia’s death, her family began looking more closely at what she had left behind: poems, drawings, journal entries, letters, and notes.
Her writings eventually became part of a larger effort to understand her experiences and to encourage conversations about mental health.
Shamaine said on her daughter’s first death anniversary, the family decided to begin advocating for mental health.
Part of that advocacy became a message she continues to share with young people: ask for help, and do not think that struggling is your fault.
Shamaine also spoke about how young people may turn to their friends when they are struggling, rather than reaching out to adults who may be able to help them.
For Shamaine, Julia’s story became a reason to encourage young people to recognize when they need support and to know that they can ask for it.
A place to sit, talk, and listen
One of the exhibition’s most striking installations is Julia’s Bench, a collaborative work featuring artist-painted benches, and origami tree, and Julia’s poems.
The installation grew from Julia’s creative work and the conversations her mother had with Julia’s high school friends.
They looked at the poems, drawings, journal entries, letters, and notes Julia left behind. They talked about her, her experiences, and the things she had expressed through her work.
They then brought some of those memories into the benches.
The concept behind the installation is simple but meaningful: sitting on one of the benches can communicate that someone is willing to reach out, listen, or talk.
The benches are also intended to become spaces for workshops that promote not only awareness of mental-health conditions, but also mental resilience through creative projects.
Julia’s poems appear near the benches, while an origami tree forms part of the installation.
The work turns objects and words left behind by a young girl into something that can now invite other young people to pause and connect.
In this way, the installation does not simply preserve Julia’s memory.
It gives that memory somewhere to go.
Finding healing through art
For Shamaine, art also became a way of reconnecting with Julia.
During the pandemic, when workshops and exhibitions could no longer be held in the same way, she began exploring art and how making art could help with healing.
In her written statement displayed in the exhibition, she recalled being the kind of mother who kept many of her children’s scribbles and artworks.
“Every time I would use Julia’s works on paper, I felt like we were connecting with each other.”
Her own paintings combine paper collages, acrylic paint, and modelling paste to explore themes of peace and faith.
For the exhibition, Shamaine describes herself as having “collaborated” with Julia by embedding pieces of her daughter’s artwork into her paintings and allowing those pieces to guide her decisions.
The connection appears throughout the exhibition.
Among Julia’s belongings, Shamaine encountered stories and images that eventually shaped her fascination with wings.
One story in particular stayed with her—a mother telling her child, “These are where your wings were.”
“I’ve been fixating on wings since then,” Buencamino shared.
The wings eventually became angels.
For Shamaine, the angels are more than recurring images in her work. During the opening reception, she explained that they can remind people that they have guardians around them—ones they can acknowledge, speak to, and ask for help.
“Give them a name, talk to them, and ask for their help.”
It is a message that fits naturally within an exhibition shaped by grief and mental-health advocacy.
The angels become a reminder that people do not have to face difficult moments alone, and that asking for help can be part of finding a way through them.
From personal grief to shared conversation
What began as a mother’s attempt to understand her daughter’s life and death have grown into a wider advocacy.
Shamaine spoke about how, after Julia’s death, people who had experienced similar struggles began opening up to her.
At the time, she said, conversations about mental illness were often kept within families. Her own experience made her realize how many people could be silently struggling without others knowing the depth of their pain.
That is part of what she hopes to change.
Rather than allowing difficult experiences to remain unspoken, she hopes young people can recognize when they need help—and feel comfortable reaching out to the adults and people around them who can support them.
At FEU, that message now enters a space shared by students, artists, educators, psychology professionals, and guidance personnel.
The university’s decision to bring the exhibition into an academic setting reflects the idea expressed during the opening: that art can create opportunities for empathy, understanding, and connection.
For Susi, the exhibition is not simply displaying creative work. It is also about creating an environment where people can encounter perspectives, reflect, and engage with one other.
For Shamaine, that conversation is ultimately rooted in Julia.
An invitation to pause
Of Angels & Julia does not ask visitors simply to look at paintings.
It asks them to look closer—to Julia’s words, to the memories preserved through her artwork, to the grief that shaped her mother’s creative journey, and perhaps to experiences of their own.
The exhibition will remain at the IARFA Exhibit Hall, Ground Floor, Architect and Fine Arts Building, from Oct. 7 to 24.
For Shamaine, the hope is that students who enter the gallery will find more than an exhibition.
They might find a story.
They might find a moment to reflect.
Or they might simply find a place where someone is willing to listen.
The benches offer a place to sit, talk and reach out. The angels offer another reminder—that there can be someone to turn to, someone to speak to, and someone to ask for help.
In the quiet moments inside the gallery, as visitors pause before Julia’s words and Shamaine’s paintings, the exhibition’s message becomes tangible. Some people stop. Some reflect. Some are moved to tears.
And perhaps that is what it means for a space to become safe enough to feel.
Together, they reflect what Shamaine hopes Of Angels & Julia can offer its visitors: not only a way to remember Julia, but a reminder to reach out, ask for help, and make space for conversations that can sometimes be difficult to begin.
Because sometimes, healing begins with something as simple as knowing that one does not have to carry everything alone.
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