Kim Oliveros
Neil de la Cruz
Rocelie Delfin
Kim Oliveros
Neil de la Cruz
Rocelie Delfin
FINALE ART FILE
Christmas Show 2025
LOUIE CORDERO
Brain Rot
Louie Cordero’s latest exhibit, Brain Rot, was an idea that struck him intuitively in the same way other works and creative sources have inspired him—from books to music, as well as the internet and social media. It is a reflection of this phenomenon: the limitless exposure to a barrage of knowledge and information that the mind is supposed to digest slowly and appreciatively, but which has instead led to the paradoxical outcome of poor comprehension, the disappearing habit of reading, and all manner of repulsive behavior online—deemed, perhaps, as counterproductive.
Cordero broadly defines the title of his show as a “mental decline from overconsumption of low-quality, repetitive, or unchallenging online content.” It represents our current state, especially within a reality filtered through varying degrees of haphazard data. It is a reality that, in part, has become a reflection of our culture’s own sordid affairs: corruption scandals, bureaucrat capitalism, and the normalization of substandard projects. There is a brooding detachment amid the smorgasbord of reels and viral videos—and it is the kind of detachment that leads to a lack of critical thinking and, at some point, a society that lacks conscience.
In his own uncompromising imagination, Cordero seeks to convey a form of commentary through his paintings by elaborating on and combining symbols, memories, and other cultural facets that once represented a bygone era when everyone’s attention seemed more intact, rather than aimlessly wandering. In one of his works, Blasé, he depicts a seemingly unresponsive and absent-minded character who is content to go with the flow and has surrendered itself to a kind of mutation in order to adapt to civilization’s own confused and hollow devolution. “Mutation, not rebellion”—a phrase associated with one of the 1980s’ pioneering techno bands, Devo—has since become an accompanying theory in much of Louie Cordero’s art, where every character, every city, and every bodily appendage seems to succumb to a form of mutation bordering on the grotesque figure, a rotten outcome—perhaps a reflection of society’s own failure to address what is truly ailing it: a failure to focus and to pay attention.
In his other works, Cordero combines his own collection of myriad content: from references to a series of earthquakes that hit the country, his brushes with bike accidents, a childhood memory of storming Malacañang, his father’s fascination with UFOs and Betamax players, to his own fascination with Fangoria magazine and a slew of old horror shows. The large, painted movie billboards in Cubao until the early 1990s, the live broadcasts of Senate hearings on anomalous flood control projects, the airbrushed jeepney chassis, and his own longing for prayer and meditation—all contribute to his vast array of references and images. But here, he staves off the possibilities of brain rot to turn these elements into a more structured kind of rottenness. His elegant grotesquerie is a predominant feature of Cordero’s art, in line with the Romanticist view that ugliness is the true mirror of society.
While this show is by no means only an exploration of rottenness, there is no denying the visceral force and detail of these works in their remarkable diversity, ranging from the intimate and personal to the large-scale and epic. The smaller paintings, almost all measuring 27 by 27 inches, could qualify as a separate show or an extension of Brain Rot—and may be viewed as quasi-portraits of characters who perhaps convey private turmoil apart from Cordero’s warm personality among friends and associates.
An artist responding to the times is always an engagement to look forward to. This is especially true of Louie Cordero’s Brain Rot, his latest exhibition of 14 mostly acrylic works, which provides, in part, a glimpse of the state of the nation today—a mutated, rotten, and abysmal sight—both from the vantage point of history and from Cordero’s refracted imagination.
- Ricky Torre w/ CLJ
KIM OLIVEROS
At the Edge of Fairyland
Growing up, Kim Oliveros took a summer workshop at the mountains of Angono. There he painted lush trees, peaceful landscapes, and Angono’s beautiful lake. Angono is described as a town that nurtures creativity. It is most known for its art and music. For Kim, the town is where he grew up and it is a place he holds dear. But he now sees how this land is slowly disappearing.
In the current exhibition, “At the Edge of Fairyland”, Kim is inspired by his hometown. Unfortunately, the town now faces problems with the quarrying of the Sierra Madre. Through his exhibition, he urges viewers to consider what vanishes when we dig too deep. He recalls during his childhood there was a typhoon that submerged Angono in floodwaters and thick mud. It covered many parts of the town. The quarrying disrupted the land’s balance. People said the floods were because “may hinuhukay kasi sa bundok”.
Kim’s works are an ode to Angono and its land. His paintings include young girls playing fairies, wearing flower crowns and holding wands made of tree branches. These symbolize childhood, imagination, and our connection to nature. He makes a collage of a mountain quarry site as the base of his work, which shows the contrast between innocence and destruction. Kim also made use of wallpaper with brown leaf patterns to represent the muddy water that floods his town when heavy rains come. It is a reminder of what happens when the land is disturbed. His current works are about remembering what they had, what shaped him, and what we stand to lose if we keep letting parts of our Fairyland disappear.
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- Mica Sarenas
NIKKI OCEAN
Slow Painter
s l o w painter
The dream began with barren land: dusty brown, hot, and dry. The light was glaringly bright as she looked into the sky. “Where are they taking my trees?,” Nikki remembered thinking in her dream, as she watched celestial bodies urgently fly her hardwoods into unknown territory.
This vivid dream signaled the start of s l o w painter: a concept that Nikki had unwittingly been nourishing before she endured a forest extraction. Years of subconscious build-up ushering a swift and drastic pruning. “I was due for a reforestation,” shared Nikki when she began to paint, p l a n t i n g, again.
This is the iridescent thread that weaves in and out of these paintings – a storybook apocalypse that depicts the torturously slow and arduous process of growth. Process over product, Nikki worked on the paintings simultaneously instead of one by one, inviting a conversation to unfold.
In lieu of the digital tools she’d employed for years, she succumbs to the carnal pull of presence, trading control for play: ripping magazines to snip out objects and colors that “feel delicious” together; unearthing relevant pictures from a clear book library accumulating dust—a repository of visual references from young adulthood ‘til now. She tears apart old studies of paintings to spin fragments of former selves into something new.
As ragged as this process feels, Nikki is brought home to the sweet parts of childhood. Cut-outs resurrect the tender: a little girl dresses up paper dolls while a teenager retreats into fashion. The tactile as a means to self-soothe—over the pandemic, she painted a butterfly a day for a month, and now, colorful wings flutter into her paintings.
Is metamorphosis really a story of beauty?—Cocoons are alienating and terrifying to the touch.
What goes on inside the chrysalis is excruciating and violent – it is dissolution and disappearance. We die inside.
Yet in this silent darkness, we labor Light:
As in nature, a weapon may be soft, iridescent, unseen – a fluid nacre forming around an intrusive grain of sand, to shield the oyster’s delicate body from within.
Concentric layers of this silky coat compounding into a gentle rainbow tough as bones, for as long as twenty years. Over time, these skeletons alchemize into radiance.
To shed one’s past and one’s wounds, is the pearl, free from shell, wearing itself as the jewel.
– Camille Pilar
RAFFY T. NAPAY
Araw-Araw
For Raffy Napay, he sees himself as a sun that shines light into his son’s life. He is a parent who is guiding his child. In his previous exhibits, Raffy’s works revolved around the term Mananahi, and from that word he came up with the term mana. The current exhibition is entitled “Araw-Araw” because it symbolizes his day and his son’s day. It means everyday, with their daily life and routines. Like a cycle, just as how his parents share their mana, he shares his own mana with son. It’s his turn to shine light in the being of his son’s daily life.
His big work entitled Araw-Araw (2025) was installed like a puzzle. It symbolizes the child’s play done by him and his son. It also means a new morning, and a new life for the next generation. Along the walls are balls that Raffy and his son made. These balls symbolize milestones in their lives. In his works titled Sealed Memory (2025), there are different objects with a family memory or an everyday experience. Covered with layers of string, they have a secret inside, like the human mind that when you internalize something it is only known to that person, while others just see the exterior. Yakap ng Dugo (2025) are threads braided to symbolize three bloodlines; Raffy’s, his wife’s, and his son’s. For Raffy, there are three bloodlines combined to make the person. For his work, Pag-ikot, the color of the sunset symbolizes his parents who are now whole and they are at their golden age.
For Raffy, thread is a person’s pagkatao or being. It symbolizes the many ugat or blood vessels in a person’s body. Raffy inherited skills that he uses for his art. With these skills, he passes his own mana to his son. Like a sun, Raffy guides him to a future. His parents had their golden age of parenting and now Raffy is starting out with his own.
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- Mica Sarenas
BABYLYN GEROCHE FAJILAGUTAN
Soft Windows
The Strength of Fragile Things
For Babylyn Fajilagutan, a window is a frame for stillness and solitude, a reminder of how we see a glimpse of sky as we look out and up from the inside. In Soft Windows, her seventh solo exhibition, she returns to imagery that she first explored three years ago. What was once shaped by the crisis of a pandemic is now reimagined as a quiet meditation on hours that drift and colors that shift.
Each piece is a testament to the artist's pursuit of simplicity, albeit never to the point of minimalism. The surfaces are built through multiple layers of paper, thread, and acrylic. Torn edges are left raw, honest, and organic. Threads pierce and bind while mimicking spider webs, blades of grass, or twisted vines. Fragments of meticulously composed and hand-torn paper cling imperfectly to canvas, lifting at the sides as though breathing, showing sculptural dips and bellows. The result is not reduction but refinement, restraint that allows every feature to carry weight.
Fragility is both medium and message. Paper is easily torn and thread can unravel, yet in Fajilagutan’s hands, they become resilient, delicate forms that hold their own against the flatness of canvas. Works such as After Midday, Grass Below the Window Screen, and First to Wake Up capture not just the passing of light through the artist's collaged assemblages, but the quiet strength of fragile things, all placed together with intention and reflection. For the last piece specifically, it seems the artist is trying to capture that poignant sliver of blues and purples giving a final embrace to shadows and darkness while bracing themselves from the arrival of the reds, yellows, and oranges of a shining dawn, making palpable the excitement of a new beginning.
The artist’s canvases open us like windows into ourselves, offering glimpses of a vast world while quietly drawing the gaze towards tender introspection. Soft Windows beckons us to linger, to sense how fragility transforms into presence, and how a slice of silence can glow into a warm, consoling light.
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- Kaye O’Yek
MICH DULCE
Nagsasalitang Ulo
Mich Dulce’s artistic practice began in autobiography, but the self, inevitably, cannot remain intact; it opens outward. One slips into the slow coil of self-reflection to recognize the colonial legacies that still script the body, the gaze, the self, and even the craft. From training with the Queen’s milliner to designing for Maison Michel Paris, Dulce’s hat-making trajectory forged a technical fluency that bound her to a lineage canonized in European craft histories.
Despite being schooled in the rigors of research, material manipulation, and form-building, her first year in her current role as Industry Mentor for the Chanel and The King’s Foundation Métiers d’Art Millinery Fellowship clarified the limits of that lineage. Within a field defined by European heritage, her presence compelled her to question her place in millinery’s canon and ask what role her culture might play here. It is in this disjuncture that her practice found the possibility to speak otherwise.
Extending the limits of the craft of hat-making towards sculpture, Nagsasalitang Ulo makes audible her exploration of identity. Dulce grafts millinery’s Western codes onto Filipino traditions, terrains, and cultural memory, unsettling a fashion system that has long upheld its illusion of a single, universal order and its disavowal of other histories. What emerges is a counter-archive of memories and inheritances: The salakot unraveled into scarlet ribbons of grosgrain, flaring into the air; hand-carved rice terraces transposed into a green-upon-green blocked crown; the Ilocano gourd hat worn by farmers and revolutionaries, re-skinned in latex and buckram; the kubo or payag rendered in buntal and crinoline, an afterimage of Victorian petticoats.
Marian Pastor Roces has written of the Filipino head as the site of “animated culture-making”—Dulce takes up that inheritance through an elsewhere that is neither ethnographic revival nor Western mimicry. Her improbable material entanglements, with whorls of local adaptations and ironic refractions, attest to her mastery of craft even as they stage memory as insurgency, producing rebellious temporalities that posit what it means to (re)fashion a national identity out of fragments and refusals.
From that elsewhere, each hat becomes a talking head. The grammar of haute couture bends until it begins to speak another language. Across the phantasmagoria of fashion, what was once catalogued and classified opens its mouth—wild as abaca fiber, cutting as wire.
Text by Zea Asis
Vakul A  dome-shaped traditional headpiece made from the vuyavuy palm, the vakul protects Ivatan farmers in Batanes from both sun and rain. It reflects the Ivatan people’s adaptation to the harsh climate of the northernmost islands of the Philippines. Palm Sunday In the Catholic ritual of Palm Sunday, woven palm fronds are carried to commemorate Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. In the Philippines, palms are shaped into birds, flowers, and other designs, then blessed and placed in homes as symbols of honor and protection. Samar Inspired by the limestone formations of Biri Island, Northern Samar. Sculpted by centuries of waves and storms, these rocks bear the drama of the island’s landscape and its exposure to the elements.
Tangkulu The tangkulu is a headcloth worn by the Bagobo people of Mindanao. A flat piece of cloth that was Folded and tied around the head to create shape, it signified rank and authority, and was reserved for warriors (Bagani), chiefs (Datu), and ritual leaders (Mabalian). Gumamela Bubbles A recollection of the artist’s childhood practice of crushing gumamela flowers to make suds, which were then used to blow bubbles. Banig The banig is a hand-woven mat made from pandan, buri, or seagrass. Used for sitting and sleeping, banig weaving varies by region, with distinctive patterns and colors. It remains an important craft and symbol of community life. Pagsanjan Falls A tribute to the Philippines’ abundance of natural water landscapes.  Pagsanjan Falls in Laguna is a well-known three-drop waterfall, with clear turquoise waters flowing from mountain springs.
Tabungaw The tabungaw is a traditional Ilocano hat made from hollowed gourds. Once used by farmers in the fields, by schoolchildren at graduations, and even by revolutionaries during the Spanish era. Bahay Kubo The bahay kubo, or nipa hut, is a traditional stilt house made of bamboo and palm, found across the Philippine lowlands. Its light frame allows it to be rebuilt quickly after storms. Salakot The salakot is the wide-brimmed dome hat of the Philippines, used for protection from sun and rain. Made from bamboo, rattan, or palm, the salakot influenced the design of the colonial pith helmet.
Rice Terraces The Banaue rice terraces of Ifugao were carved into the mountains over 2,000 years ago. They demonstrate advanced engineering and sustainable agriculture, and remain central to Ifugao culture and ritual life. Pahiyas The Pahiyas Festival of Lucban, Quezon, held every May 15, honors San Isidro Labrador, patron saint of farmers. Houses are decorated with vegetables, fruits, and brightly colored rice wafers called kiping, celebrating harvest and gratitude. Sampaguita Sampaguita and ilang-ilang garlands are commonly sold outside churches and along streets. These fragrant flowers are often offered to saints, placed on altars, or hung in vehicles. Cebu Gold Death Mask Gold death masks were used in fifteenth-century Cebu precolonial burial practices. Thin sheets of gold were placed over the eyes, nose, or face of the deceased, believed to ward off evil spirits and signify social status.
ANNIE CABIGTING
five formed from two
Five From Two, Annie Cabigting’s latest exhibition, unfolds with a restrained clarity: a meditation on the block, a site where pigment gathers and settles. One block—brought from her former Cubao studio, and once a buffer between shipping crates—and another—encountered during a wander in Singapore—are transposed from their utilitarian origins into vessels of accumulated paint, and finally, into subjects and objects of art.
In their form, these works stage a dialogue between structure and accident: the strict geometry of the cube juxtaposed against the spontaneous, almost luxuriant, accrual of color. What emerges is a still life where the rigor of shape and the unruly exuberance of pigment lean into each other, neither fully dissolving into the other.
Valiantly, this insistence on form is sharpened by Cabigting’s choice of the monochrome, a visual language aligned with the act of documentation. By stripping away chromatic excess, the artist foregrounds the block’s presence as record, its authority as witness.
Evidently asserting their “objecthood,” the blocks and the paintings invite the gaze from every angle. None claim primacy; each perspective is provisional, partial, and shifting. In this suspension of hierarchy, Cabigting gestures toward the instability of seeing itself. To observe, the works suggest, is less about mastery than about the recognition of fractured apprehension.
Traversing the exhibition, we are placed inside this multiplicity of viewpoints: a simultaneity of truths and their denials. The blocks stand before us as both anchors and enigmas. With the reference at hand, the question reverberates—what do we do with the truth we think we see, when it is never singular?
What confronts us is not only the object in its material density, but also its passage into the space of art. The block persists as block, yet also unfurls as translation, as image, as metaphor. Literalness here entwines with literariness, each deepening the other.
Opening three questions, Five From Two inquires: what names an object as art, how it becomes painting, and how it seizes attention within the exhibition space. Cabigting gathers and releases these objects at once, holding them inside the frame of art while keeping open the lives they had before.
-Carlomar Arcangel Daoana
KATHLEEN GOBASCO
Fleeting Glimpse
In “Fleeting Glimpse”, Kathleen Gobasco looks at her works and thinks it is a meditation for her. The idea for the exhibit came from a fleeting thought that came while commuting in a car, jeep, train, or any other vehicle. While a person gazes outside the window and catches a glimpse of the interiors of a stranger's house, they have brief moments that trigger involuntary recollection. It is as if they catch people’s traces.
The traces of something or someone leaves evidence of the person’s past actions. It could be a lingering scent, an object left on the table, a memory imprinted on someone’s mind, an emotion that still lingers, or simply by being someone. It is evidence of their past selves.
These lingering traces and passing moments can give people a glimpse into the past.These traces show that even in the present moment, we can often find evidence of what has come before, and may use it as a guide towards the unknown tomorrow.
Gobasco’s process involves a scenario or narration of some abstract idea or words and turning them into a drawing. The main subject of her drawings are hands that she uses as a symbolic representation of these ideas. She makes use of graphite pencils for her artworks. Over the years, she has enjoyed exploring more of this medium which has become a staple in creating her drawings. (Mica Sarenas)
RYAN JARA
BERSIKULO
Ryan Jara’s Bersikulo is a monumental chapter in the artist’s ongoing visual chronicle of the Filipino spirit—his most expansive exhibition to date. Through a Cubist idiom that fractures, refines, and reimagines the human form, Jara crafts a sweeping narrative that merges mythic scripture with the intimate terrain of family life. In his hands, Biblical stories become prisms through which to contemplate the soul of the nation and the Filipino family.
At the heart of the exhibition lies “Mapagtalimang Kawal,” an 8 x 18-foot epic that revisits the story of Gideon, the unlikely general who led a dwindled battalion of 300 against a vast enemy force. Here, Jara conjures a maelstrom of bodies and flame: soldiers in mid-charge tumble across a somber terrain, their forms jagged and bristling, flickering in torchlight. The darkened landscape is alive with the upheaval of battle, capturing not only the fury of physical confrontation but the spiritual crucible from which deliverance arises. The painting becomes an emblem of improbable triumph—of clarity emerging from chaos, of faith as a weapon sharper than any sword.
While the exhibition opens with divine warfare, its subsequent “verses,” as Jara calls them, pivot to the domestic realm. “Gabay sa Aking Buhay” is a family portrait whose Cubist configuration resists sentimentality while magnifying the symbolic. The father’s limbs and heart, while dismantled, are held tenderly. It is a visual metaphor for the family as a living body—each member an organ, a pulse, a lifeline, sustaining and protecting the emotional center of the home.
This deeply personal approach finds its most poignant expression in “Perpektong Regalo,” inspired by the verse, “Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee.” The painting depicts Jara’s son, who is on the autism spectrum, not as a figure to be resolved but as a constellation of radiant fragments. The son’s being is rendered as a kaleidoscope—disjointed but luminous, imperfect only in the human sense. Here, Jara’s radical distortions achieve something rare: a portrait of unconditional love unburdened by the need for coherence. Wholeness, he suggests, is not symmetry—it is presence, acceptance, and grace.
In Bersikulo, Jara’s visual language becomes a kind of scripture—one that eschews dogma in favor of revelation. Through jagged geometries and layered perspectives, he unearths both the magnitude of collective struggle and the sanctity of everyday life. His is an avowal of faith not merely in the divine, but in the frailty and resilience of human connection. Each painting is a verse, each distortion a deeper truth.
-Carlomar Arcangel Daoana
CARLO GABUCO & EUNICE SANCHEZ
sa lukong ng mga palad (in the hollow of palms)
Ang simula’y pagyakag ng kamay sa kamay na umalala. Anong bigat, anong gaspang, ng mga palad na pinangsasalikop. Anong gaan, anong lambot, ng mga daliring hinuhulma sa hugis ng mga bagay. Ang kamay na ganap na humuhuli, maging sa mga imaheng naibigan ng mata. Ang kamay na bagyong lumilikha’t sumisira. Ang kamay na may tiyak lamang na laki at lapad na siyang hangganan ng maaaring maari at hindi. At matapos ang pag-angkin ay ang tanong: nasaan ang mga bagay na nawala/nakawala sa ating mga kamay?
Mababanaag sa unang tingin na ang eksibisyong “Sa Lukong ng mga Palad” ay pakikiniig nina Eunice Sanchez at Carlo Gabuco sa labi—sa mga naiwan ng walang-pakundangang paggamit sa mundo. Oo, nakatitig ito sa kakagyatan ng kontemporanyo na harapin, ng personal at kolektibo, ang mga krisis ng kasalukuyan. Ngunit ang higit na taimtim na binabakas nina Sanchez at Gabuco ay ang mga bagay na sinubukang angkinin ng kamay ngunit sadyang naging tubig—sinundan ang lukot ng mga palad, ang ligid ng mga kalyo, hanggang matagpuan ang guwang sa pagitan ng mga daliri. Nililimi ng mga obra nina Sanchez at Gabuco na ang paghahanap sa mga bagay na ito ay maaaring mag-umpisa sa kasukalan ng arkibo.
Kapwa potograpo, ang lagi’t laging nakalatag sa harapan nina Sanchez at Gabuco ay hindi ang kasalatan ng imahe [na malaking suliranin, halimbawa, sa mga aktibista-arkibista ng mga marhinalisadong komunidad] kundi ang umuugong nitong kaliwanagan—ang mga kulay na walang kasing-tingkad, ang laksang larawang nakalulunod. Maaaring sa puntong ito naging mapanghalina ang kalabuan bilang udyok sa paglikha nila sa mga obra. Mula sa mga mukhang paulit-ulit na pinipinta at binubura sa kambas hanggang sa analogong proseso ng pag-iimprenta ng imahe sa di-mawari-waring asul, niyayakap nina Sanchez at Gabuco ang kalabuan. Pagsuko ba ito sa paghahanap sa mga bagay na hindi nasasakop ng kamay? At kung gayon, ay pagsuko rin sa posibilidad ng pagpapatuloy lagpas ng pag-angkin?
Naniniwala akong ang layon ng nilikhang kalabuan nina Sanchez at Gabuco ay hindi ang marahas na transpormasyon upang gawing di kabasa-basa o di kakita-kita ang naiwan mula sa mga marhinalisadong ideya/lawas/komunidad. Pagtatanong itong muli hinggil sa katuturan ng pag-intindi sa mga bagay na madulas sa kamay. Dumudulog ito sa ideya ng “karapatan sa opasidad” ng kritikong si Eduoard Glissant [Poetics of Relation, 1997] na itinuturo ang pagsalunga sa legasiya ng kolonyalistang epistemolohiya, ng kaliwanagan ng pag-angkin, na siyang bumaluktot sa kahulugan ng mga bagay.
Sa pagitan nina Sanchez at Gabuco, maging ng kanilang mga obra, nangungusap ang kalabuan sa kapanatagan ng sarili sa pagkakaiba. Ito ay ang hindi ganap na pag-intindi ngunit patuloy na pakikiisa sa kapwa. Sa paglinang sa rekuperatibong espasyo ng eksibisyon, na umiiral sa harap ng unti-unting pagguho ng mga istruktura ng lipunan at pagka-agnas ng mundo, nais nilang ibukas ang isang anyaya ng pagtitipon—ang pag-aabot ng kamay sa kamay ng iba upang makibahagi at magbahagi; ang pagbubukas ng palad upang muli’t muling dito dumaloy.
[Ryan Cezar Alcarde]
ERWIN ROMULO
Greatest Hits
Greatest Hits
We ascribe much meaning to sound from its source. If we are prompted with the image of waves breaking on a shore, even the susurrus of radio static becomes prelapsarian ASMR to our ears.
A record that is commercially available on vinyl—be it of noise, field recordings, long-duration minimalism, live electronic music, free jazz, free improvisation— is neatly categorized in the avant-garde section at record shops and purchased as “music”.
In the Philippines, where all manner of objects fill the spaces of our every day, this is closer to home. We cherish objects and hold on to them as talismans, heirlooms, and keepsakes. Ephemera connects us to the eternal. We commune with figures and images of saints where we live. Even in the digital age, Filipinos remain ever reverent to radios, speakers, and Magic Sing.
The exhibition is about sound.
It features sound objects: musical instruments, stereo boomboxes, and a videoke machine.
The choice of objects in the exhibition reflects a certain period and place: Metro Manila from the 1980s to the present. It also represents the experience of the curator being witness, accomplice, and instigator in the city’s various scenes involving art, music, and performance.
By Erwin Romulo
TALL GALLERY
LOVOL: new instruments
Datu Arellano x Malek Lopez
Eric Bico x Gerecho Iniel
IC Jaucian x Teresa Barrozo
Marco Ortiga x Silke Lapina
with
Katz Trangco
Himig Sanghaya Chorale
Curator Erwin Romulo proposes a theory that all musical instruments were created for a purpose beyond pure function. He suggests that it was necessary for cultures to create instruments for a particular time, and asks, that if we accept that, what would future ethnomusicologists study from our era?
That was the prompt given to three groups in 2019 for a project called Future Ethnomusicology. Each group was composed of two members each: a sound practitioner/composer and a visual artist/maker. The pairs had never worked together before. Composer Alexander John Villanueva was commissioned to write a new composition for both a classical ensemble and for the newly invented instruments. The debut performance was on September 20, 2019 at the Huseng Batute Black Box Theatre at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
For Greatest Hits, the Finale Tall Gallery features the second installment of Future Ethnomusicology. This second iteration includes new collaborations or updated versions of the invented instruments. Composer Katz Trangco, head of the U.P. College of Music Composition Department, was commissioned to write a new piece for these instruments to be performed together with 20-person vocal chorale Himig Saranghaya.
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UPSTAIRS GALLERY
SUBFLEX
Jigger Cruz / Igerak
Pow Martinez / Sewage Worker
Juan Miguel Sobrepeña / Moon Fear Moon
Arvin Nogueras / Caliph8
Maia Reyes / Nonplus
Subflex is an experimental music program established in 1998 by sound and visual artists Arvin Nogueras and Maia Reyes. Initially, the program operated on a monthly schedule, hosting different artists related to diverse music subcultures, from improvised and traditional music to avant-garde and exploratory sound practices. The initiative was a reaction to biases of genre-specific music venues, tribes, or other clusters and music factions emanating in Manila from the 1980s towards the 1990s. Nogueras expounds, “I wanted to create a platform where practitioners with different preferences in music and sound-related experiences can co-exist. Hiphop, Punk, No Wave, Electronica, Noise, New Music, Outsider, Experimental, Shoegaze, Folk, Doom, Sludge, and other unpopular forms of music all interweave in Subflex”. The group has performed in Japan, Taiwan and Manila.
For Greatest Hits, longtime collaborator Erwin Romulo worked with the artists of Subflex in producing new work by modifying boomboxes and creating new music. Each artist was assigned a boombox and a pitch, for which they made music recorded in cassette tapes. All are single editions, thus making the three elements—music, cassette and boombox—part of a single art piece.
Romulo’s decision to use the boombox is hinged on its portability. “Before the advent of mobile phones and the Internet, the boombox provided both access and agency. Not only could you play it anytime anywhere, you could also record tracks off the radio and make mixtapes with them. The order of the songs could be curated. Each tape could be customized mixes for road trips, parties, or be sent as love letters. To a pre-pubescent adolescent growing up in the late 1980s, that was a lifeline. It was liberating.”
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VIDEO ROOM
furball
Dix Buhay
Edsel Abesames
J.A. Tadena
Jason Tan
Jun Sabayton
Karlo Estrada
Lyle Nemenzo Sacris
Lyndon Santos
Mads A. Lamanilao
Mikko Avelino
Quark Henares
Ra Rivera
Sharon See
Artist collective furball (est. 1999) formed in Cubao, Quezon City, in a space alongside other artist-run collectives like Big Sky Mind and Surrounded by Water. Furball included filmmakers, visual artists, designers, musicians, and other recalcitrant elements in its fold. Together, the group instigated art actions in different platforms, including music videos, gallery exhibitions, and a Viva Hotbabes film.
For Greatest Hits, furball artists produced new moving image works installed inside a customized videoke machine. The machine is operable for visitors to select a song and sing to. This work was first exhibited in Berlin, Germany at the daadgalerie (August 2024). Its original iteration featured works that paid homage to furball’s music video history. In the past, the group made music videos for bands like Slapshock and Rivermaya. The version presented here is the first time the videoke machine is exhibited in the Philippines.
Curator Erwin Romulo asserts that “the videoke machine was not invented by a Filipino, as is commonly believed, but its ubiquity across the archipelago makes the claim to indigeneity credible. Every barangay sings to videoke, even the remote ones. Videoke is never an individual, nor a private, activity. Anybody within earshot can attest to this”.
Like other Southeast Asian cultures, the tradition of music making is communal in the Philippines. This pertains mostly to the practices of indigenous communities, as part of collective rituals such as wedding celebrations, commemorating the dead, and heralding a harvest. All take part. There is no performer and there is no audience. That is also the case with videoke. When singing videoke, one might hold the mic, but it is everyone altogether who makes the music.
By Mica Sarenas & Stephanie Frondoso
RICHARD QUEBRAL
Reality Framed
