Kim Oliveros
Neil de la Cruz
Rocelie Delfin
Kim Oliveros
Neil de la Cruz
Rocelie Delfin
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.
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.
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.
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)