But where the prefix “meta” is also tied up with notions of death ('meta” as “beyond” and “after”), it would be more productive to highlight not how dark these caves are but how many caves Cuevas chooses to inhabit. For the case with him isn't that the current social conditions of the art world kill him, but his art consistently moves from one social condition to another, invoking a process of self-effacement akin to suicide.

Observe: His absence in the Manila art scene has made him appear generally absent in Philippine Art at large, symptomatic of a Manila-centricity that should be rectified. But even in his home of Cebu he is largely a deviant, having been mostly considered an abstract expressionist where figurative painting is the existing hegemony. And the movement he is affiliated with—abstract expressionism—is not only anachronistic and foreign, but also in itself problematically nomadic. After all, abstraction's roots came from the West's desire to purify painting through form—and now it has been invaded by expressionism's emotional intent. In short, he is now a Cebuano pseudo-abstract expressionist in Manila.

In shorter, he is a renegade. A nomad. Consistently and beautifully displaced.