Kim Oliveros
Neil de la Cruz
Rocelie Delfin
Kim Oliveros
Neil de la Cruz
Rocelie Delfin
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.
- 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.
- Kaye O’Yek