Thursday, October 02, 2025

9:00 AM | Tropical Comforts and Watercolor Serenity

I did not get to see Gretchen Villanueva-Heras’ new solo exhibition, Tropical State of Mind, when it opened at The Gallery by Pinspired at The Henry Resort last August 23—which feels like forever. The show has since been extended to October 14, which speaks volumes about its popularity. Indeed, when I finally made time to see the exhibition for myself, most of the works have been marked “reserved”—the good news of buyers waiting in the wings.

I liked it. I think the show showcases Gretchen’s delicate watercolor works with the unmistakable intimacy of someone who paints not to impress but to remember. [Point of disclosure: Gretchen is a former student.] Also known by her moniker “GretchensWater,” I know her to be a self-taught artist from Bais City whose previous works have seemed to me to be shaped by memory, place, and personal history. In this new collection, she definitely draws inspiration from her coastal hometown and the tropics that surround her. I like, above all their clarity, and simplicity: there is no grandstanding in this show, no forced irony, no attempts at avant-garde shock. Instead, what we have is a clearness of vision steeped in the ordinary, but translated into light, into color, and into tenderness.

In this sense, Gretchen’s work has to be read as something deeply personal. You can also sense in her brushstrokes the shadow of her artist father’s craftsmanship. You can also sense her nostalgia of growing up in a house where hands built things meant to last. You can sense that there is a deep affection for heritage and family woven into her compositions, which is why each painting feels like a page from a watercolor diary. Clearly influenced by her own fascination with the past, Gretchen’s works are not just depictions of flora and provincial landscapes but fragments of storytelling—they are memories folded into botanical patterns and sunlit textures.

There is a quiet lushness in these watercolors, a sense of calm that feels almost radical in an age addicted to speed and spectacle. The series—botanical vignettes, glimpses of familiar roads, curated moments of tropical life—wears its heart on its sleeve. They do not shout. They do not demand. They invite. And in that invitation, they allow us to remember what it means to breathe.





What strikes me first is the brushwork. Watercolor is a famously unforgiving medium; one careless stroke and the whole composition buckles into mud. Yet here we see restraint: the veins of banana leaves rendered with precision, the glisten of palm fronds caught mid-sway, the woven fibers of a solihiya chair articulated with tenderness. The artist gives us details that never overwhelm but always anchor, as if to say: the tropics are not chaos, they are order disguised as abundance.

The subject matter might tempt dismissal by some as “hotel art”—those safe, decorative canvases designed to be pleasant backdrops in lobbies and conference rooms, scrubbed clean of specificity. But to call these works as such would be to misread their intention. What we have here is not mere décor, but comfort art—and there is a difference. Hotel art is soulless, a manufactured neutrality. Comfort art, for me, is art that chooses warmth over confrontation, solace over provocation. It acknowledges the necessity of beauty in a world already heavy with fracture.

Consider the piece with the empty chair nestled among heliconias and monstera. It is not just a chair—it is a longing. Someone has just left, or someone is about to arrive. It suggests presence through absence, memory through arrangement. Or the piece of sugarcane trucks lined up on a highway beneath a row of palms: it’s not just a rural roadscape, but a meditation on rhythm and patience, on the pulse of provincial life. These are images that comfort not because they are shallow, but because they are deeply familiar.

There is also something quietly radical about insisting on tropical beauty as subject matter. For too long, the tropics have been exoticized from the outside, or dismissed from within as mere backdrop. Here, the artist reclaims it as central. The leaves, the plants, the cane fields—they are not supporting cast, but protagonists. In an art world that often insists on rupture and dissonance as markers of seriousness, it is refreshing to see someone insist that serenity is just as valid a pursuit.

And this is where Gretchen’s work finds its place within Dumaguete’s art scene. Dumaguete has long been a haven for artists, writers, and performers, but it often leans toward the cerebral and the literary, where provocation is prized and irony is the order of the day. In the visual arts, too, there has been a surge of experimental and conceptual work—installations, mixed media, even performance-based pieces—that speak to the intellectual ferment of the city. Against that backdrop, Gretchen’s watercolors—like that of her comrade in art, Kat Banay—may seem modest, but their modesty is precisely their power.

Her paintings remind us that Dumaguete’s art scene need not only be about breaking forms or pushing limits; it can also be about grounding ourselves in the pleasures of the familiar. In a city by the sea, lined with acacia trees and shadowed by mountains, Gretchen gives us a mirror of the place we already inhabit but often forget to see. Her art is both a celebration and a preservation of the tropical sensibility that marks life in Negros Oriental.

True, the paintings are not ironic. They are not self-consciously clever. But they are sincere, and that sincerity might be the boldest thing about them. They remind us that sometimes the truest art is not the art that unsettles, but the art that steadies. And in their tropical state of mind, these watercolors give us the most necessary of gifts: a space to sit, to look, and to feel at home.

Labels: art, art and culture, dumaguete, friends, negros, painting

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Tuesday, March 18, 2025

4:33 PM | Portrait by Viviana Riccelli

The Siquijor-based Italian visual artist Viviana Riccelli told me a few years ago that she actually did a portrait of me based on a photo before she met me, and was actually surprised to eventually meet me in person. It took me a while to seek out that portrait, but this is it! You can view more of her art in her website.

Labels: art, life, painting

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Tuesday, November 19, 2024

9:24 PM | Copycat by Idwardo

Often, when I go and see exhibitions in town, I turn off the pesky part of my brain that allows voices uttering art theory, and art history, and art techniques, and just feel around the gallery and be drawn to the one object that I cannot shake. In the Arté Café Gallery [ IG: @artegalleryph ] exhibit, PREKARYATSII, now showing at the Arts and Design Collective Dumaguete [ IG: @adcdumaguete ], this happens to be “Copycat,” a work in acrylic by Cebu artist Idwardo. There’s something vaguely cinematic about it, like a piece of color film stripped to its basic Technicolor separations, which render the subject — a young man in an Asian squat staring straight at the viewer — both mysterious and compelling, rendered as he is in rainbow basics. That his “copies” in the other colors show different facets of himself — one faceless and the other grotesquely masked — also lend to this mystery, signifying some subtext of horror. There’s an interactive quality to the art as well: when you take the invitation to scan the QR code beside it, your cellphone screen immediately becomes a camera that has settings making each figure pop out more prominently. It’s quite a nice addendum to the exercise, but I like the tripartite nature of the painting itself: our selves in three iterations, guises of who we are, staring straight at life [or the viewer] with a somber, even steely gaze. I wonder what he thinks of me, this young man in a squat in three colors. I wonder why he stares so.

Labels: art, art and culture, dumaguete, gallries, painting

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Tuesday, October 31, 2023

3:27 PM | Atoa Gihapon

For the love of all that’s good and beautiful, if you’re in Dumaguete before the 26th of November, you must find the time to visit MUGNA Gallery over in Valencia town—because displayed on its walls right now is an extraordinarily curated group exhibition, executed by Ixx as part of the festivities around the recently concluded Buglasan Festival, which gives a precise overview of the state of Dumaguete fine arts at the moment, in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, and on the cusp of a future that’s filled with promise.

There is an uncommon sense of culmination to be felt in the whole of KaMugnaAn, which groups together 38 visual artists who call Negros Oriental their home. What I mean by this is that this show feels very much like a continuation—and also a grand elevation—of that pandemic project titled Atoa. If you remember, that was a group exhibit that opened early in 2021 at Dakong Balay Gallery, and provided the artists of Dumaguete an inciting trigger which made possible the great flowering of visual arts in the city in the midst of the pandemic. Atoa initiated a continuous flow of exhibitions throughout the rest of the pandemic years, and in the various galleries that popped up during that strange and confounding time—including a sequel, Atoa 2, which bowed in 2022. For that initial show, I wrote for the Philippine Daily Inquirer: “[The exhibit shows] a collective ‘atoa,’ and with that, a sense of community pride. They herald an excitement for what’s brewing in the local art world. They signify cultural light in our current darkness—Dumaguete still at it for … its local celebration of [the arts]. They defy hoary, outside formulations—showing us that Dumaguete artists are at once gloriously local but also very much at home in the world.”

If Atoa staked a claim, KaMugnaAn is the final flag that marks distinct territory.

Because what is gathered here are works that represent most of its artists with the distinct styles they’ve found for themselves since 2021. And because the show also introduces us to new Dumaguete artists coming into the fold, as well as older artists now finding their way back home. And finally because, despite the disparity of subjects and styles, Ixx found an uncanny way to connect them all—with the show itself becoming a narrative of the Negros Oriental experience, a necessary prescription for the provincial festival it was meant to showcase.

Step into MUGNA’s space, and you will find a virtual yearbook of the exhibits that have come to being in the past three years. Babbu Wenceslao’s “Anino ang Anino sa Adlaw” is a reflection of his Republic and Asanamo exhibits, with its attendant attention to acrylic, LED lights, and fiberglass mixed media, and his unvarying focus on social issues; Amelia Duwenhoeger’s “Rabbits” is taken from Dual/Ities, where she showed a penchant for mice and rabbits frolicking about in familiar human shenanigans; Daniel Vincent’s “Wars and Missiles” is a continuation of a translucent project in abstraction he first showcased in Diverse/Reverse; Faye Manalo’s “Lost and Found” is a darker take to her ripple-and-line art that glowed with brighter sheen in Ripples and Introspection; Hemrod Duran’s “King” continues his feel for representational clay art from New Works, this time with an eye on chess pieces [you can see a fuller display of this current tendency in a limited exhibition at the National Museum of the Philippines in Dumaguete]; Iris Tirambulo’s “Halaran” continues her textile/insect explorations about domesticity and motherhood from Halad; Jana Jumalon’s “Passage” finds her making new terracotta shapes straight from Tierra Quemada; Jomir Tabudlong’s “1450-2023” defines more spectral colors interlaced with found images from Pieces Align; Juan Macias’s “Determinism” continues his somber collage works from Sonder.











Jude Millares’ “Hand-Over” goes for even starker pagan shapes and motifs he first plumbed in Journals; Moshi Dokyo’s “Sag Asa” mercifully pushes his comic depressed art persona from ProQuackStinate into a more hopeful composition; Mikoo Cataylo’s “Dire Ta,” with its painful rendition of a limbless man in chains, continues the provocative assault on social issues we first glimpsed from Pakigbisog sa Kailaloman; Alta Jia’s “The Future is Not Ours to See” is another of the artist’s exquisitely rendered pen-and-ink probing into psychological vistas we have seen from all the group shows she appeared in, most especially Manifest; Kitty Taniguchi’s “Untitled [A Study for the Series, The Vicinity]” continues her endless fascination for mythic winged horses and black crows, this one stained by a red sun; Dolly Sordilla’s “Playdate with Poppy” gives us more whimsical polymer figures in shiny acrylic colors straight out from Ambot Gubot; Rey Labarento’s “Owhi Really?!” pursues the same thread-outlined social scenes he pioneered in At the Moment; Trina Montenegro’s “Mystery Plant” takes off from the aboriginal-tinged botanical macroviews of Windows of Perception; Viviana Riccelli’s “The Angel of Mount Talinis” plumbs deeper into transcendental abstraction we first caught in States of Mind: A Dialogue Between the Inner Self and Multiple Realities, and Jutsze Pamate’s “Flex” continues his sculptural work commenting on modern realities, using a Pinocchio head, from KomBaTe.











All of these are exhibits from the last three years or so. But Hersley-Ven Casero extends it even further: in “ginhawa [breathe,” he takes an illustration he made for a children’s story from my 2012 short story collection, Heartbreak and Magic, which we exhibited in his first solo show, Uncommon Magic, and updates that image of a boy with magical things swirling around him into this self-portrait—a photographer with a camera in tow, eating a bananacue while inspiration swirls around him in rainbow colors, which is the closest Mr. Casero has ever confessed, on canvas, on how the magical has truly informed his art-making.

This is all to say that if you missed following the sheer development of Dumaguete art in recent years, KaMugnaAn is your most welcome crash course.

The show also showcases the art of familiar artists who really need their own solo shows soon—Mariana Varela, for example, whose “Sigbin” exhibits teeth that sink deeper into her mythology of being she has explored before; or Kevin Cornelia, whose “Padayon” is perhaps my favorite in this crop of works—a black and white portrait of a laughing young man paradoxically intertwined by flying paper planes and gumamela blooms whose leaves encasing the body are not distinguishable from thorns; or Portia Nemeño, whose “Sugilanon” borrows the style of art nouveau in this painterly rendering of local mythology; or Gerabelle Rae, whose “The Dreaming of Escape” is a surreal wish fulfilment of childlike wonder; or Dyn Quilnet, whose “Embrace II” is a mixed media evocation of misshapen maternal nightmares. There’s also Rovan Caballes, who takes off from Warholian prints to present an acrylic portrait of his grandmother Ines Serion, the first female mayor elected in the Philippines.

All told, I am happiest for Jutsze Pamate, who was the face of Dumaguete visual arts in the 1990s and 2000s, and who has come back to the scene quite unexpectedly, first with a pop up at the El Amigo Art Space a few months ago, and now with this inclusion in KaMugnaAn. This for me is part of the appeal of the exhibition—that while it celebrates the vibrant art of the current crop of young artists in Dumaguete and Negros Oriental, it also makes accommodation for those who have come before. I can hope for the inclusion of other artists like Mariyah Taniguchi or Paul Pfeiffer or Kristoffer Ardena or Susan Canoy or Cornelio Aro [the last two would be a great addition to the show with the theme of “Negros Oriental”], or even Karl Aguila and Bong Callao—but 38 artists are already quite a handful.

The show also introduces us to the works of a handful of artists whose works I want to see more of. This includes Budoy Marabiles, whom we all know as an EDM master and front man for Original Sigbin, whose “Santelmo”is a Rorschach ink blot test of what could be monstrous; photographer Carmen Del Prado, whose “Piggy Bank” is a veritable diptych of a beach scene from the same day but at different times and moods—demonstrating the fleeting quality of the world we inhabit; Jenny Alvarez, whose “Metanoia,” awash in pink hues, playfully divert us from the subtle threat of her main image—a pair of hands in the process of scissoring a flimsy pink thread; Koki, whose “Ghosting [Talinis]” is a work of unglazed porcelain that mimics the unfurling of a white and ghostly sheet, but presents itself as a metaphor for Dumaguete’s nearby mountain; and Marjo Banagua, whose “Dumagit [Captivate}” captures in sepia tones in acrylic and line art the basic allure of Dumaguete, with the campanario as its focal point. [Other artists featured in the exhibition include Samnathis, Sandy Dupio, Ma. Isabel Gutang, Jo Camille, Florenz Dionisio, Dani Sollesta, and Dan Dvran.]

As far as I know, these works were prompted by the Buglasan Festival’s theme of “Garbo sa Kabisay-an,” in essence a celebration of Oriental Negrense scenes—and perhaps cares. You could see efforts in that respect, in particular the works of Sandy Dupio, Carmen Del Prado, Viviana Riccelli, and Gerabelle Rae [portraying natural landscape], Portia Nemeño [portraying literature], Marjo Banagua [portraying iconic spots], Mariana Varela and Budoy Marabiles [portraying lower mythology], and Rovan Caballes [portraying history]—but the theme has been thoroughly processed by each of their artistic sensibilities, while the rest of the works in the exhibition, I believe, present to us the Negros Oriental of their imagination, both in delight and deprecation, in pleasure and in pain. That duality is important, and the fact that this exhibit acknowledges that is to its credit.

Curator Ixx does recognize the disparity in styles—but sees common grounds in terms of depictions of places and people, finding in each one a unique element of the Negrense. He notes in his program for the show: “Putting together an exhibition to highlight the wealth and number of different styles, techniques, and personalities of a locale is always a herculean task, as the push and pull, the width and breadth of experience and paradigm manifest in countless ways. Overcoming this, Mugna Gallery, in celebration of the Province of Negros Oriental’s Buglasan Festival [in] 2023, presents an exhibition that gathers local artists and ties them along the string that is the Dumaguete creative spirit—a KAMUGNAAN like nothing else.”

We will take him at his word: this is a celebration of a communal creative spirit.


KaMugnaAn runs until November 26 at MUGNA Gallery, Unit 1 Uypitcing Building, Jose V. Romero Road, Bong-ao, Valencia.

Labels: art, art and culture, buglasan, dumaguete, negros, painting, sculpture

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Wednesday, August 30, 2023

8:21 PM | Lito Aro

Cornelito “Lito” Aro is one of Dumaguete's best homegrown visual artists, and I wish his work gets more attention. I first met him when he was a resident painter at Antulang. He was painting a seascape, and I was so enthralled with it and must have been so effusive in my enthusiasm, that he picked up the painting from his easel and gave it to me. [This was a long time ago, and I could not afford to buy any artwork at all!] This one is titled “Magbibingka,” and it currently hangs at Residencia Orlina. Somebody should give him a solo exhibition soon!

Labels: art, art and culture, dumaguete, negros, painting

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Thursday, July 06, 2023

12:40 PM | One Has to Find Time to Play with the Arté Café Gallery Cat

Labels: art, art and culture, cats, dumaguete, life, pets

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Saturday, June 17, 2023

7:06 PM | Gentle People

Grab this art book! Produced by Pinspired Art Souvenirs [ IG: @pinspired.ph ], GENTLE PEOPLE is an art craft book that contains the collaborative work of thirty amazing Dumaguete artists, including Hersley Casero, Jarome Rey Simon, Portia Nemeño, Moshi Dokyo, Alma Zosan Alcoran, Angelo Delos Santos, Cil Flores, Dan Dvran, Phil Gad Sabuga, Paul Benzi Florendo, Dyck Cediño, Leah Navarro, Kat Banay, Jerald Junn Teves Bongcawel, Gerabelle Rae, Shaoi, and Sabrina Skye Diago Benito. Go to their website for more details on ordering!

Labels: art, dumaguete

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Tuesday, June 06, 2023

7:00 PM | Amen.

Labels: AI, art, artists, issues

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Saturday, June 03, 2023

7:24 AM | In Dumaguete, The Arts Flourish Part 14: Art in the Post-Pandemic—An Epilogue

In Shelter Gallery over in Tabuctubig, just as the month of May was easing into fruition, I stumbled on a show that was exhibiting works of such vitality, such strong presences, and such mindful meaningfulness that the apt response from any art lover might as well be worship. I’m not kidding.

The show is titled Matinabangon, and it opened last May 12 [and closes on June 16], and is meant to be a showcase of contemporary visual artistry from the other side of Negros Island, represented here by Occidental artists Charlie Co, Ann Gaurana, Barry Cervantes, Elwah Gonzales, HR Campos, Janrey Llegue, Jay R. Delleva, Jovito Hecita, Jun Jun Montelibano, Karl Arnaiz, RA Tijing, and Vincent Sarnate, all from by Bacolod’s Orange Project. Talk about Bacolod artists coming to the Dumaguete art scene, and meaning business. They came blazing.



The first painting that drew me in was “Tryst at the Creek,” by Jun Jun Montelibano, which haunted me even days after seeing it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Was it the painting’s storytelling quality? Was it the simplicity of the composition that’s disturbed somewhat by the uncanny? Was it the fairy tale-like take of a young girl in white, holding flowers, wading in ankle-deep creek water, meeting a freak from some unholy mishmash of that monster rabbit from Donnie Darko and a plague doctor from the Middle Ages—which somehow affirms a nightmare I can never tell my therapist about? And yet the painting is also a picture of loveliness. It is also frightening. Both all at once.

It was the key piece of art that provided me the way to look at and appreciate the other works in the collection—an exhibit of such eclectic curation that also somehow made this show come off as an unintended boast, but certainly a well-deserved one. The show seems to say, “This is what we do in Bacolod, Dumaguete.” A dare.

And what is it that they do?

One can begin with Charlie Co, the godfather of Bacolod visual arts, who knocks off timid artistry that coasts along with having nothing to say by giving us “Anger,” a work in acrylic on canvas which is worthy of its title: it depicts primarily what looks like a brutalized man who sneers in contortions of anger and pain as he is paraded around—like a crucified Christ—in an unholy procession, held aloft by a menacing mass of people in strange yellow masks. It invites religious and political readings, maybe even the sociological—but the point is the poignant pain dramatized by the man’s face, his eyes fixed on the viewer like a rebuke. The work unsettles, by design of course, and with this, an artistic gauntlet has been thrown.



But the exhibit is not all like this work by Co. The show contains multitudes of styles: from classical representational pieces like Karl Arnaiz’s “Mother and Child,” a work in charcoal on paper that recalls familiar Renaissance figures, and Ann Gaurana’s “Consenting Vulnerability,” a work in oil featuring a female nude, with flowers, on an oblong-shaped canvas—with the woman’s face turned away from us like a knowing rebuke to the male gaze; to the wild surreal contortions and even pop-art inventions of RA Tijing’s “Carnis,” a work in oil which features a two-headed beast in a forest, with some canines popping out of its blue skin, pausing before a feast of red meat, and Barry Cervantes’ “God Bless the Ammunition,” a work in acrylic that also takes the figure of the Christ, this time dressed as the hood ornament of some futuristic rocket ride, driven by a figure in protective gear with a skull for a face, through a landscape that’s clearly an environmental dystopia. Both paintings are ripe for endless interpretations. Also in this latter mode, you have Janrey Llegue’s “Taga Uma” [acrylic and modeling paste on canvas] that takes whatever pro-vegan messaging in Tijing’s work and makes it more horrifically tactile; and Elwah Gonzales’ “Maayo Na Lang ang Sobra Sang sa Kulang” [acrylic on canvas], which is portrait of a woman with a heart for a body, with what looks like sheets of water coming out of the ventricles—a commentary on love? Who knows.



In between these styles, you have Jovito Hecita’s “Pollination to Rot,” a work in mixed media on a round canvas featuring an assemblage of fallen leaves in autumn-rich hue, which on closer inspection is really the color of death, made more precise by the carcasses half-concealed in their midst: the bones of a bird and the decaying body of a rat peeking out from under the leaves, both of which make up the lower angles of a triangle with an actual clock ticking above, its frame yellow as the leaves, and its numberless existence making us mindful about the eventual mortality we all have to face. This is death personified by a painting.



Heady stuff indeed—which probably explains why I found myself attracted to the more whimsical pieces in the collection, like HR Campos’ “Abi Ko Friendly Ka” [mixed media on canvas], which features an orange beast that looks like a dragon—or a menacing caterpillar; or Jay R Delleva’s “Swallowed” [acrylic in canvas], which is very much in the mode of Margaret Keane but taken to a higher conceit with a merry mix of John James Audobon nestlings and William Morris florals; and especially Vincent Sarnate’s exquisitely sculpted mixed media works “Pugad,” “Aratiles,” and “Last Leaf,” which all take the narrative of the botanical mania of plantitas and infuses the figure of the potted plant with the darling nightmare of baby faces growing from the same soil.



I realized right then and there that what attracted me to this show, like Montelibano’s haunting work, was the pieces’ ability to thread nightmare and whimsy in the same breathing space—some more-in-your face or more infused with social messaging than the others. The variety, and the conceit, works. That they’re all done with such boldness of composition and theme adds to the success of the exhibit.

The aim of the show, riffing off the Visayan word of the title which means “to help, support, and assist,” is to represent thematically the raison d’etre of Orange Project and Shelter Gallery together—which is that both are artist-run galleries that “share the same vision to provide nurturing spaces for artists and their communities,” which is “rooted in the mission to provide a multidisciplinary platform for the people and by the people,” thus making matinabangon not just a show title but also a descriptive for the “art eco-system” that both galleries try to be “sustainable” in. All of these are in the statement introducing the show.

That word “sustainable” feels like a wound—because this is the last show you can see at Shelter Gallery before it closes after June 16, when its lease at the venue it occupies finally runs out, and with no clear future for another venue to transfer to in sight.

“This is why I wanted to have this show with Bacolod artists,” Shelter’s main mover Faye Mandi tells me. “I wanted to close the gallery with a blast—featuring very powerful works by fellow artists from the other side of our island. People who share the same vision as I do, who can underline what I’ve been trying to do since opening Shelter.”

It has been a year and six months since Shelter Gallery opened, with its inaugural show featuring Ms. Mandi and Hersley-Ven Casero in a collaborative exhibit—something that propelled them both to loftier reaches as working artists, going as far as maintaining undeniable presences in national art events such as Visayas Art Fair in Cebu and Art Fair Philippines in Manila.

In the interim, Shelter played host to 15 exhibits, including Fast Times [March 2022], Training Wheels [April 2022], At the Moment [May 2022], Pakigbisog sa Kailaloman [June 2022], Jia You [July 2022], Intention [August 2022], Surface Tension [September 2022], Every Day is a Sorrowful Mystery [October 2022], Windows of Perception [October-November 2023], Pagsibol ng Punla [December 2022], Layaw [January 2023], Sonden [February 2023], Ichi-go Ichi-e [March 2023], and Hue [April 2023]—plus two or three one-off events that combined the visual with theatre arts and literary arts. Many of these shows were group exhibitions, but Shelter Gallery managed to put out solo exhibitions, a considerable number of them first-time solo exhibitors, for artists like Rey Labarento, Mikoo Cataylo, Eli Wong, Vanessa Gaston, Chanel Pepino, Trina Montenegro, and Juan Macias.

Ms. Mandi assures me this is not the end of Shelter. That they’re actively scouting venues for relocation, and that the gallery might take another form—but still very much within the range of her vision of “providing nurturing spaces for artists and their communities.” In the meantime, she is eager to go back to her painting—something she has missed since she became busy being a gallery maven.

Labels: art, art and culture, bacolod, dumaguete, negros, painting, pandemic

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Saturday, May 13, 2023

8:00 PM | Tryst at the Creek

This painting by Junjun Montelibano, “Tryst at the Creek,” now on display in the Matinabangon exhibit at Shelter Gallery [ IG: @shelterph ], haunts me. I can’t stop thinking about it. Is it the storytelling quality? Is it the simplicity of the composition that’s disturbed somewhat by the uncanny? Is it the fairy tale-like take of a young girl in white holding flowers, wading in ankle-deep creek water, meeting a freak from some unholy mishmash of that monster rabbit from Donnie Darko and a plague doctor from the Middle Ages — which somehow affirms a nightmare I can never tell my therapist about? And yet it’s also lovely. And frightening. All at once.

Labels: art, art and culture, negros, painting

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Friday, April 21, 2023

9:25 PM | Some Whimsy

There seems to be a whirlwind of pop art brewing in Dumaguete these days.

Last April 5, Arte Gallery Café [2nd Floor, Allegre Building, Rizal Avenue] opened the first solo exhibition of Moshi Dokyo, a testament to delightful chaos the artist calls Proquackstinate. And peering closer into the exhibition, it becomes also a testament to the bewildering “gifts” of anxiety and doubt and rage. Looking at the whole caboodle of it, I can also very well say they are mirrors to the bundle of nerves I call my life. [Perhaps also yours? Welcome to the club!]



Because what do you have here? A rash of confessional works that speak of a chaotic mental state, but acknowledging that chaos with whimsy and artistry, and rendering it into a playful landscape of color and lines. One work in a particular is a triptych of paintings, all portraits, that show the evolution of the subject—most likely the artist himself—from a state of edgy calm to a state of full-on rage, all three marked by fiery all-seeing eye floating, like a signifier of anxiety, on the subject’s head. The eye rages more with its fieriness as the pictures evolve, the rage made even more animated when the flames burst out of the confines of the painting’s frames. This work would have been terrifying if it were not, somehow, also funny. Which I guess is a double-edgedness I see embedded in the very nature of much of pop art: they can contain all sorts of expression, even maddening ones, but somehow the best of them retain an element of playfulness that provide us an ironic distance from the emotions at play. I like that. I like seeing the rage, and acknowledging its anger, but I also like being able to laugh at it. That is a good recipe for catharsis.

The fiery all-seeing eye is a motif that touches most of the works in Proquackstinate, including an installation piece that makes use of it as an emblem to a kind of altar, complete with another triptych set of portrait caricatures—perhaps depicting the artist and his fellow artist friends—in lines that evoke a weariness, a certain madness. Is this the artist’s way of acknowledging the pain that comes about when you come to the worship of the artistic life? I’m not exactly sure, but that’s how I read it. And the subtext everywhere else seems to be pain—we see a bloodied nail, a bisected dog, a plane window surrounded by objects of despair, a wall of graffiti that reminds us of the zany madness of the underground artist Robert Crumb.







And yet, despite all that pain and all that expression of anxiety, what transcends is an antithetical brightness. I like that duality; that is the essence of life—to know that undergirding all our brightness is also a consuming darkness, and vice versa. Life—and mental health—is not a monolith: I can both cry and laugh at the same time.

Moshi Dokyo carries over that playfulness—and thematic duality—in another work that’s part of a group exhibition, Hue, that recently opened in Shelter Gallery [Angatan, Tabuctubig]. In “Moshpit Aftermath,” Moshi’s contribution to the collection, we find the same tortured, fire-ravaged figure on canvas, but it comes with a more sinister twin: a work that reminds you of an emergency box glass casing, but inside, there’s a facsimile of a gun [dolled up in baby blue], and on the casing itself, a message: “Breakdown in Case of Emergency.” I found that play of words chilling: not “break glass” but “breakdown,” like an invitation to despair willingly. Why does Moshi Dokyo’s work feel like therapy?





Many of the other works in the group exhibition also take pop art’s cue, including Jascer Merced’s resin and acrylic renditions of Gandalf and Frodo from The Lord of the Rings; Skye Benito’s “Psyche,” a splendid and expressive portraiture of a woman with butterfly wing ears; and Jonee Jibe’s “Noe’s Space,” a beguiling work of acrylic on canvas that functions very much like a dream: you see a playground swing done up in barber’s stripes occupying beyond a forbidding arc, and silhouetted by either moon or sun, all the while flooded by undulating flesh-colored blobs that feel threatening but have the texture of cotton candy dreams. I live for images like this—because they are truly Rorschach tests. My favorite remains Dolly Sordilla’s “Daisy,” a gorgeous sculptural work from polymer clay, epoxy clay, synthetic glass, synthetic hair, resin, and acrylic paint, which depicts a girl with a sunflower for one eye taking a walk—but walking via the animated tendrils of her blue hair. It speaks nightmare, it speaks delightful anime; it reminds me of the dark fantasies of Neil Gaiman. But the gorgeous details of it all—the sculpted hair, the knitted dress, the blue eye, the sunflower—reminds me once again that Dolly is one of my favorite Dumaguete artists whose work I want to see more and appreciated more.





The other works in the group exhibition do not exactly epitomize pop art: two are pure abstraction, including Daniel Vincent Fabros’ “Exotiq 2,” which is a delightful uncut gem of a canvas pulsating in shades of emerald and amethyst and garnet, and Amber Tashiro’s “Liberosis,” which is a ravishing Zen-like work almost delicate in its deliberate use of dots and shades and shape; Sid Labe’s “Mangtaso’ng Kahanas” and “Bulawanong Bahandi,” both of which depict men of the laboring class going about their daily work [one is a potter, and the other is a peddler of plastic wares], are representational works of painstaking photorealism that Sid has become known for [although I still stand on my conviction that his sculptural works made from old ballpens represented a major departure for his art]; and two others are more conceptual—and almost invisible if you do not pay attention: Jan Alix’s “Terminals” occupy ceiling space, an installation of playing cards and strings that for the artist call attention to “the intentions of what we make [which] are evident in the ethics of how we create,” and Ma. Isabel Gutang’s “Work Transfer” occupies the floor space, which litters it with paper on which are printed assorted diagrams and texts and pictures, occasionally threaded by shoe marks. Both are ciphers done well.

Proquackstinate in Arte Gallery runs until April 23, and Hue in Shelter Gallery runs until May 5.

Labels: art, art and culture, dumaguete, exhibits, review

[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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1:40 AM | Girls in the Windows, on a Whim

“Girls in the Windows,” photographed by Ormond Gigli in the summer of 1960 in New York. Made on a whim, made without a commission. Gigli looked out the windows of his studio one morning, and saw the brownstone right outside being readied for demolition. He thought he could use this condemned building for a photo, with girls in bright dresses in every gaping, empty window. He had someone ask the foreman of the demolition crew if he could use the building for an hour, and was told he could do it the next day, during the crew’s lunch time [and to use the foreman’s wife as one of the models]. Gigli made the calls to a modeling agency asking for volunteers, and he arranged the permits as soon as he could. The next day, on the appointed time, he had second thoughts — but the girls were already arriving. He went ahead anyway, directing the photo shoot with a bullhorn. He took 15-18 shots with a 4×5 Speed Graphic. The very next day, the building was demolished. And the photo went on to become an icon.

I love creative things made on a whim.

Labels: art, fashion, history, new york, photography

[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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Thursday, March 30, 2023

7:00 AM | In Dumaguete, The Arts Flourish Part 12: The Reel Life

Curiously enough, the best film of Dumaguete in the pandemic was made just right before the pandemic—and in that regard can be then taken as prophecy. The short film A Wakeful Sennight, made in the last months of 2019 by Andrew Alvarez and Stanley Alcala, asks us to picture the world in disarray: the sun is inexplicably in a standstill, and the world’s population—or at least the segment we see representing it—are tortured by the endless brightness and cannot sleep. When the film begins, we see a man—Mr. Alvarez directing himself—traversing a bucolic neighborhood, looking up at the sky and seeing the sun shining brightly in noontime splendor. He checks his watch—and that’s when we know of the film’s conceit: it is past 8 in the evening, and the sun has not set. There is no ensuing panic, only puzzlement. Our man tries to go to sleep and finds that he can’t. The days pass, and he and everyone else succumb to a zombie-like existence of wanting sleep but are forever deprived of it. The world becomes desolate, and when we see people about in the streets, they are in a stupor. And so it goes, on and on—until sunset eventually comes, and our man has finally gotten his need of night, but has collapsed on the street in much-needed slumber.



It’s a simple film, done without dialogue, and unspooling in its absurdity carried only by its musical motif [a French ballad the filmmakers composed themselves] and the comic work of everyone involved. When the filmmakers collaborated on it in 2019, it was the culmination of years of filmmaking done piecemeal—acting work here, editing work there—until the duo of Alvarez and Alcala, friends since childhood, finally joined forces as a directing/editing/producing tandem. A Wakeful Sennight was the product of that first collaboration—but no one saw it as the prophecy it turned out to be: a showcase of Dumaguete in desolation, its people afflicted by a phenomena bigger than themselves and walking around like trapped rats. It was a “comedy” when it came out in late 2019, and virtually a “documentary” when reviewed in the light of 2020—and it demonstrated one sure thing for both filmmakers: no one really knows how the days will go, so they might as well do film.

But is Dumaguete a filmmaking hub? And did the pandemic affect it?

“Dumaguete is home,” says Mr. Alvarez. “I grew up in Piapi; Stan in Bantayan. Our late grandfathers [Rev. Proceso Udarbe and National Scientist Angel Alcala] were well-known personalities [who helped] put this city on the map.” That familial affinity assured a strong bond since they met in grade school at Silliman, and lasted even with almost divergent paths they took in college and right after. Both alumni of Silliman University, Mr. Alvarez graduated with a degree in public administration but currently works as a content editor for a digital marketing company. Mr. Alcala, meanwhile, studied medical technology and eventually went on to finish medical school at Silliman, and is now a resident physician at a local hospital [and recently got into a training program for pathology in a Cebu hospital].

Their lives are totally different, but the arts always had a strong pull on both of them. “I started out in my creative career as a theater actor and occasional songwriter,” Mr. Alvarez says. “I’ve also joined a number of workshops, [with] the Philippine Educational Theater Association and the Elements Singer-Songwriter Camp.” That is how most people in Dumaguete know him: as a reliable mainstay in many plays and musicals in campus, and as a musician who has recorded and performed with the Belltower Project. On the other hand, most people see Mr. Alcala as someone devoted to his medical studies and career—but what many do not know is that he has dabbled frequently in film simply because of his love for the medium. “My first major foray in the creative scene was in a film that my fraternity/sorority sister asked me to edit,” Mr. Alcala says, thinking back to Tigway, a short film by Maya Jajalla, which won Best Film in the 2015 Silliman Film Open or SFO. [The SFO started as Dumaguete Shorts, an exhibition of locally-made short films in 2007, marking it as the first film festival in Dumaguete, but twice changing its name as its concentration expanded and changed over the years: the 61 Short Film Festival in 2010 and finally the Silliman Film Open in 2014.] “I have no formal training in filmmaking,” Mr. Alcala continues, but jumped at the chance to edit a film anyway—and subsequently won the Best Editing award for Tigway in that year’s SFO.

Mr. Alcala is aware that Dumaguete actually has a heritage of filmmaking—even if nobody knows or acknowledges it anymore. He cites, for example, the National Artist for Cinema Eddie Romero as a major influence, a Dumaguete filmmaker who parlayed his creative writing passions as a high school senior at Silliman into a mentorship with the great Filipino director Gerardo de Leon, eventually cementing his own reputation as a maker of solid Filipino film epics [such as Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kaayo Ngayon and Aguila] and schlocky Hollywood B-movies [such as The Mad Doctor of Blood Island and Black Mama White Mama].

But there’s also the equally distinguished Dumaguete director and screenwriter Cesar Jalandoni Amigo, who penned the political tragedy The Moises Padilla Story [1961] and won a number of FAMAS Awards for his screenplays. And there’s also the fact that in the 1950s, at the height of the Golden Age of Visayan Cinema, a film company based in Dumaguete named Visayan Films—founded by Don Luis Arnaiz and Don Serafin Teves, whose family owned Park and Main, the two main movie theaters in Dumaguete for many decades—released a “musical extravaganza” titled Dumagsa in 1950, directed by a Cebuano director named Tura Rodriguez, and starring a popular Cebuano starlet named Rosita Fernandez. [Dumagsa was the story of a school teacher who falls in love with a hacendero. It had its premiere in 1950 in Park Theater and was a tremendous success, which led to its second offering, Leon Kilat, about the revolutionary hero hailing from Bacong. This was directed by Sat. A. Villarino. But after Leon Kilat’s release in 1952, the company no longer made any other movie, although other titles that Visayan Films was planning to do included another musical by Tura Rodriguez titled Miss Smiles, a society drama by F. Borromeo titled Karnabal, a musical by M.P. Velez titled Sa Kabukiran, a drama by G.C. Abdula titled Layawan, and an action drama by Mike Calumpang titled Bartender. The two films made are now considered lost films—possibly lost in the fire that engulfed Main Theater in the 1970s.]

But for the most part, except for actual filming done by Mr. Romero in his hometown—for The Passionate Strangers in 1968 and for Kamakalawa in 1981—Dumaguete has not really pursued an active filmmaking scene.

But the beginning of a real film culture—with movies made by locals, using local resources—began as a trickle, starting in that first Dumaguete Shorts exhibition in 2007—and soon there were animated films by Ramon Del Prado and Xteve Abanto, and documentary films by Carmen Del Prado and Anthony Gerard Odtohan, and short live action films by Jonah Lim, Mahogany Rae Bacon, Melissa Bernas Pal, Jo Simone Vale, Raymond Vincent Cutillar, Henzoly Alboroto, Jose Adrian Miraflor, Francis James Kho, and Carl Ivan Caballero, and the genuinely avant-garde curiosities by Razceljan Salvarita and Hersley-Ven Casero. [Mr. Salvarita’s I Am Patience, about a caterpillar making its way through a forest of leaves, was ultimately nominated in the best short film category of the 2013 Urian Awards.]

Mr. Miraflor’s Voldemort Must Die, an action/comedy short about love lost in the vein of Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino, won Best Film in the 2012 61 Film Festival—and signaled the start of a production company that he and his friends named DumbFights Productions, which would go on to release a number of short films over the years, including Jake Villegas on a Bridge with the Dancing Dragons, The House The Dead The Ugly, Ang Lansang ni Jake Villegas, and Ang Paghibalag sa Kalibunan—films that would more or less define the “Dumaguete short film” for many seasons in the regional film festival circuit as stories made with a cocky flair, always in the service of comedic action, and with a lot of fantastical elements, and edits, thrown in. [The House The Dead The Ugly, a story about a bunch of killers and gangsters who wind up in a mysterious house where they’re thrown for one violent loop, remains, for me, as their masterpiece.] DumbFights would gather an increasing number of collaborators since that first outing, including Von Colina, who would come to direct [and star] in most of their later films after Mr. Miraflor semi-retired from filmmaking due to health reasons, Alex Gascon [as cinematographer], Jetmore Banot [as actor and director], Louie Villegas [as actor], Mr. Alvarez [as actor], among many others—including Jomar Solania, Paul Benzi Florendo, and Ruel Joseph Tabada, who would also make significant directorial contributions to local film.



In 2021, DumbFights would release You, their take on the pandemic and the casual indifference of people towards impending danger by recasting the health crisis as a zombie apocalypse. That year, it was a finalist at the Lutas Film Festival, which also fielded Mr. Alvarez’s Best Mayo, starring Mr. Banot as a man in desperate search for a jar of mayonnaise to the point of madness, destroying his house in the process, and angering his wife. In a small role as Mayonnaise Girl in an Ad is Ara Mina Amor, also a film director [and occasional actress]. She would also have a film in competition that year at Lutas, a horror-adjacent story titled Masulob-on, a melancholic tone poem in stark black and white about depression and desperation and temptation. But Ms. Amor’s most pandemic-centered film is the comedy short Pisti Pandemic, made in 2022 for Eksena Cinema Quarantine, which follows a naïve young man who has just wisened up to the strictures [and dangers] of the lockdown and finds himself fighting zany battles to stock up on provisions with people panic-buying everything. [The funniest bit is the introduction to his yaya, played by an actor with a considerable beard—depicted to seem like a side-effect to the vaccine.]



A cursory observation would immediately pick up on the fact that these filmmakers constantly work with each other—and especially during the pandemic. In many ways, this collaborative spirit is the lifeblood of current Dumaguete filmmaking. Almost all of the filmmakers, especially those who started doing films in the early years of Lutas and the SFO, cross-pollinate their film productions with each other’s contributions, sometimes with these collaborations spilling into the storylines themselves. [Ms. Amor’s Finals, for example, include a cameo from the fighting gangsters of Miraflor’s The House The Dead The Ugly.] They act in each other films. They do sound design for some, and production design for others. Cinematography and editing are constantly on a round robin. For Mr. Alvarez and Mr. Alcala, this is the norm for current local filmmaking—and the smallness of Dumaguete makes it a necessity. “Dumaguete contributes to the growth of our artists,” Mr. Alvarez says. “I don’t mean this career-wise though, since there isn’t much of an industry here yet. But the city has this appeal that helps clear our thoughts and prepare ourselves to be inspired. The locals foster this [and] celebrate this, and the city itself grows from it.”

“The arts scene in Dumaguete is ever thriving,” Mr. Alcala says. “It’s easy to collaborate with different artists in the creation of cohesive art, and the city has actively endeavored to develop the scene through art exhibits, film contests, and music festivals.”

To which Mr. Alvarez adds: “There’s always something to do to help express ourselves and our backgrounds. And year after year, someone new joins in our circle. Someone young, hungry, and almost always willing to open up and collaborate.”

That openness for collaboration was what drove them to pair up in the first place in 2019. They both wanted to submit a film for Lutas—and then they brought in the Gonzales cousins [Gerick and Dhen Dart] to help out with the music and cinematography, and Renz Torres [who had made the D&D-themed short Primordial Witt] as production manager, and that was it. The collaboration, now known as Potlight Pictures, would go on to produce A Wakeful Sennight in 2019 and Best Mayo in 2021, pausing only in 2020 because of the pandemic lockdown. Their latest production, released in 2022, is Trash-Messiah, a fable about a man who finds a way to get rid of trash via a rip in the time/space continuum on his kitchen table—but to unexpected repercussions. It fits right in with their previous efforts—stories that are “dark, macabre, and odd,” that give one “an unnerving feeling that something is wrong,” where “symmetry and order [exist] amidst the chaos.”

“In developing films,” Mr. Alcala says, “I usually conjure a barebones concept and Andy [Alvarez] fills it up. Occasionally, it’s vice versa. The major challenge in the process is us—our conflicting ideologies—but we’ve never failed to arrive at a compromise, and the product is almost always magical with everything seemingly fitting in place.”

Interestingly enough, they found the pandemic to be a minor hiccup in their film productions. “Shooting during the pandemic wasn’t too foreign to us,” Mr. Alvarez admits. “We already work with a skeletal team. It was just the matter of making sure we were all doing things with health and safety protocols in mind. It helped that Stan’s a doctor as well. It certainly was meaningful to me, at least, that we got to work again on a film even with all the restrictions. I loved getting out of the house with more purpose.” To which Mr. Alcala adds: “If anything, [the pandemic only] added to our process. Limitations [somehow] provoke creativity for us.” Part of that provocation to creativity was the fact that most of the online film festivals they joined during the pandemic’s peak had guidelines requiring them to add themes centering on the pandemic lockdown into their storylines, “so that was definitely a factor we had to consider during pre-productions,” Mr. Alvarez adds.

There were in fact a number of film festivals local filmmakers gravitated to during the pandemic, even if only online, chief among them Foundation University’s Lutas Film Festival, which was established in 2014 and bills itself as “the Negros Oriental film festival,” and has since gone beyond annual screenings to also cater to lectures, workshops, and mentoring sessions on film production, as well as outright grant-giving to help local filmmakers in realizing their film projects.

In September 2020, with the pandemic still raging, Lutas was left with no choice but to modify its programming to host a Facebook screening of “The Best of Lutas,” featuring previous winners of the festival, including the late Mark Lifana’s Bugas [2016], Geraldine Acibron’s Tubod [2017], Mr. Lifana’s Abag [2018], and Mr. Alvarez’s A Wakeful Sennight [2019], and selections from Komedya, including Mr. Colina’s Ang Lansang ni Jake Villegas, Mr. Florendo and Mr. Banot’s Ang Paghibalag sa Kalibunan, Mr. Banot’s Hobo Ramon, and Mr. Florendo’s Karlo. That year’s edition, sponsored by the Film Development Council of the Philippines and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, also included master classes on screenwriting with [soon-to-be National Artist for Cinema] Ricky Lee, and on “pursuing film in the time of pandemic” with Achinette Villamor [producer of Balangiga: Howling Wilderness and Ruined Heart]. It also included a film pitching competition—from which three winners emerged: Kent Cadungog’s Kuan, Puhon, Daniella Spontak’s Cotton Candy Dreams, and Von Colina’s Three sa Mountain, each of them granted a sum to realize their screenplays. Later that year, in October, Lutas would field Abag, Tubod, and A Wakeful Sennight to be part of the Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino, together with the Bacolod-based Sine Negrense Film Festival, which fielded Belle Loyola’s Dalit, Kurt Soberano’s Jameson, and Mark Raymund Garcia’s Buding: Ang Babaye nga Naglitaw.

By the following year, in 2021, Lutas participated in the 10th Annual Moviemov Italian Film Festival, and also in Cinema Rehiyon, fielding Mr. Tabada’s Pamilya, Mr. Lifana’s Tagbo, and Kaira Maureen Downard’s Daman as the Negros Oriental representatives. In November, Lutas returned to its competition format, and premiered the winning films of the previous year’s pitch competition, as well as the nine entries to the main competition—out of which emerged a new winner, Ella Louise Salomon’s Ang Bunga sa Tiyan ni Adam, a film about a gender-switched story of a pregnancy. Salomon’s tragicomedy—which features one of the best scenes of swearing in Binisaya ever captured on film—swept most of the awards, including Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Cinematography—leaving the Best Editing award to Mr. Alvarez’s Best Mayo. Salomon’s film also led the Negros Oriental roster in the 2022 Cinema Rehiyon, which also included Best Mayo, Cotton Candy Dreams, Kuan Puhon, Masulub-on, and Ramon Del Prado’s Why the World Needs Coral Reefs.

Later in 2022, Lutas finally returned to a physical festival, screening its new slate of competing films at CityMall Cinema Dumaguete. Among the finalists are Emmmanuel Noel T. Navales’ Habwa, Marco Simpao’s Kawat, Carina Simpao’s Taknaan, Fredrick Tan’s Ang Panagdagit sa Dakong Dagat, and Von Colina’s ITI E.T., and fielded a spread of new winners including a special jury prize for Daniella Spontak’s Serial Influencer, Best Cinematography for Chris Jan Vergara’s Makasasala, Best in Editing for Mary Joy Real’s Panganti, Best in Screenplay for Alfonso Adrian Cerna’s Taymsa, and Best Film for Pawlo Lasmarias’ Hatud. The previous year’s pitch winner—Mr. Alvarez’s Trash-Messiah—was also screened, and the new pitch winner announced: Ms. Amor’s forthcoming Sad Bananas. Lasmarias’ Hatud, which follows a young man who walks to school with his younger brother, only for the latter to discover that his older brother is harboring an unpleasant dilemma, would also win Best Director and Best Actor [for Lasmarias himself] at the Nabunturan Independent Film Exhibition in September 2022, and would be invited to several national and international film festivals.




Into this swirl of local filmmaking enters Edwin Dalisay Jr.—JR to most people who know him. Born and raised in Cubao, Quezon City, he was not exactly a stranger to Dumaguete. He would regularly visit his girlfriend Shyr Keene Aragones over the years, and gradually came to know many of the city’s creatives, if cursorily in the beginning. And whenever people asked about what he did, he would say he was trying to be a filmmaker, which was always the dream.

He recalls: “My parents worked abroad so I was raised by my grandmother and my older brothers. I was always hanging out with my brother, JC, who introduced me to many things, including heavy metal music, music videos—and film. I admired my brother because he was a superb graphic artist. So I chose to study Fine Arts and Design at the UST to become an artist like him. It was during our third year when we had a class in video production, and that became my first exposure to filmmaking. I fell in love with it and became obsessed with telling stories with the camera. Filmmaking became my passion. I would mostly spend my free time watching movies, music videos, and documentaries. I didn’t know where to begin at the time, and it seemed impossible for me to work in the film industry. Making films back then was expensive and we had little or no source for equipment. So after college, I worked as a web designer for a real estate company—a desperate move because it felt like the better recourse than be a bum. But at the back of my mind, I kept telling myself that, whatever it took, I was going to be a filmmaker someday. After working for about three years, I stumbled on a film school in Ortigas called Asia Pacific Film Institute, which wasn’t too expensive. I thought to myself, I can probably find a few sidelines to pay for my film education. I can work in the morning till afternoon and go to school in the evening.” So he quit his job at that time, found a few weird online jobs, and got himself to film school—a brave choice that would mirror a later, pandemic-related decision.

After film school, he found himself working for the U.S. Embassy as their multimedia specialist. The Embassy soon brought him to Siquijor for a documentation project of the Lazi Church. “It was the first time that I’ve heard of Dumaguete and Siquijor, to be honest,” he says. “On our first day, we went straight to Siquijor, so I didn’t think much of Dumaguete. But the moment I stepped foot in Siquijor, I fell in love with it. It was really the first time in my life that I was in a rural province.”

He spent four days in Siquijor, and then spent one night in Dumaguete before flying back to Manila—which was when, like the fates, he decided to go around the city alone, taking pictures with his camera. And then he met Shyr.

“I noticed her in a coffee shop and asked her for suggestions on what to do in and around Dumaguete,” he says. “It was already late in the afternoon, so I didn’t really see much and I didn’t really get to explore the place. But that evening, Shyr invited me to hang out with her friends—and getting to know them was a wonderful experience. Despite the fact that I was a stranger, they were really welcoming and friendly. I had a terrific time getting to know Shyr.”

So he kept returning to Dumaguete, to court Shyr while she showed him “the beauty of the city and how amazing Negros Oriental is.” He fell in love—with Shyr, and with Dumaguete. Slowly, he came to know the city’s artists. First, the musicians—he would watch live gigs in Hayahay and El Amigo. Then, the visual artists—he would meet Jana Jumalon, who would show him around the art scene in the city. Then, the literary artists—he would meet me, and immediately he knew I would ask him the question: “Are you related to Butch Dalisay?” [He doesn’t know.] He would meet more people over the years.

When he would return to Manila after his Dumaguete visits, he would get back to his Embassy job—and to his abiding desire to found his own production company. He called it DWNTWN Films, which he started with his best friend Phish, and his cousin Joel. “We often hung out on the rooftop where I was living and talked about movies, music, and whatever topic came to mind,” he remembers. “That’s all we ever did, hangout and talk about life and our passion for filmmaking. Then, since I had the equipment that I could borrow from work, I would sometimes find side hustles as a freelance camera operator on the weekends.” In 2013, a friend who had a band was in need of someone to shoot a live performance. “He asked us if we were up for it, and of course we were game!” Mr. Dalisay remembers. “That was our first project as a team, the thing that started it all. Even though we really didn’t know what we were doing, we were definitely having fun just experiencing the craft.” They came up with the name DWNTWN Films, because the place where JR lived was a bit of a rough neighborhood. “When we’d be on the rooftop, we could see establishments in Cubao, including Araneta Coliseum, Gateway Mall, and other high-rise buildings,” he says. “We referred to that part of Cubao as ‘UPTOWN,’ and we would call our neighborhood, ‘DOWNTOWN.’ So that’s why we called ourselves DWNTWN Films. There’s just something about the name that feels so punk rock, so underground. That’s why I fell in love with it and stuck with it.” Their efforts paid off, and soon they were getting regular gigs.

And then the pandemic happened—and with that, a kind of spiritual crisis for Mr. Dalisay. “The pandemic made me realize that life is short and we can lose everything in a snap of a finger,” he remembers. He made a sudden choice that scared even him: “I decided to move to Dumaguete during the pandemic, because I wanted to wake up every day feeling happy.”

For him, Manila was becoming too chaotic and he was missing Shyr too much. The stress of the separation was killing him—and on a lark, he contacted the Dumaguete LGU and told them that he was a Local Stranded Individual [LSI], wondering if that gambit would make them give him a certificate to travel. And it worked!

Still, it was a challenge to make the move, because travel was almost an impossibility at the peak of the pandemic. His airline kept cancelling his flight—“I got cancelled five times!”—and his plan to make the move in April 2020 eventually became a reality only in August. Getting the requirements to travel was also a huge hindrance—with lines to get a doctor’s certificate that lasted six hours. “And because my flight kept getting cancelled, my doctor’s certificates also get expired—so I had to go back and line up again,” he remembers.

And yet, moving to Dumaguete still seemed to Mr. Dalisay to be a no-brainer of a decision—even if it was a considerable gamble: “I had no plans of what the hell I was going to do here as a career, but because I had experience in filmmaking, I was confident enough to just take a leap of faith. I knew that if I moved to Dumaguete City, I’d just figure it out and find clients that will need my service. I told myself that whatever happens, I know that I have enough talent and experience for me to survive. I mean, I was a punk ass kid back then with no money and no idea what I would do in life, but I survived that and put myself in the right path to pursue my passion.”

He remembers reading an article once where he stumbled on a line he could not forget: “It was something like, ‘Remember, after the black plague, came the Renaissance.’ That quote really inspired me, and moving to Dumaguete, hands down, was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life, seriously.” And Mr. Dalisay feels that at this juncture of Dumaguete’s growth, the city will still be able to give him so many opportunities to fulfill a lifelong dream of being a filmmaker. “Here, I could write, direct, produce, shoot, edit, color grade, and even talk to clients,” he says. “For a full production, Shyr and I usually just work as a two-man crew. Of course it’s hard work but we’re really enjoying the experience.”

That faith in Dumaguete being able to give back to him has proven fruitful so far. Already, sometimes in collaboration with Paul Benzi Florendo’s Higantez Films, he has made several well-received pandemic-era videos for the Dumaguete City Tourism Office, including Kanus-a Man?, a video chronicling the hopes of local Dumaguetnon during the pandemic and encouraging them to get vaccinated against COVID-19, released in October 2021; Everyday Dumaguete, a video showcasing a Dumaguete slowly opening up, released in April 2022; and Celebrate Life in Dumaguete, a video showcasing the full beauty of the city emerging from the pandemic, released in August 2022. He has done videos for local businesses. And he has done many of the exhibit videos for the new MUGNA Gallery—a project that is close to his heart. One of these is a short documentary on the terra cotta art of Jana Jumalon, one of his first friends in Dumaguete.



“Lately, I’ve been doing short documentaries for artists here in Dumaguete,” he says. “I love projects like these because it’s really inspiring to get to know a person who’s passionate and creative. I believe that’s another appealing aspect of documentary filmmaking: once your subject begins to trust you and open up to you, you develop a strong bond with them.”

Mr. Dalisay dreams of doing narrative films eventually: “I wish to tell heartfelt stories through captivating moving pictures. I want to work with local talent, shoot in the neighborhood, and present stories about Dumaguete. Representing the magic and beauty that this city inspired in me. But, given my limited experience, I want to focus on making short films first. Then in the near future, I will eventually create full-length feature films here.”

Part of that plan is collaborating with Potlight Pictures—for whom he has already lensed Mr. Alvarez’s Trash-Messiah.

Mr. Dalisay moved to Dumaguete for love.

He plans to stay to capture the city fully on film—also for love.

Labels: art, dumaguete, festivals, film, negros, pandemic

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Thursday, March 23, 2023

9:24 PM | Accidental Art History

My essays on the arts in Dumaguete during the pandemic are becoming longer, and longer, and longer. But I don’t really care. This wasn’t my purpose when I stumbled into this series last year, but it has somehow become not just a work of cultural criticism, it has moved on to become a very specific art history: chronicling how artists in a small Philippine city dealt with three years of the pandemic. I know there are some who think, “Too long!” but you know what? Kebs, these essays are not for you. Anyway, I’m done with visual arts [8 essays in all!], done with theatre, done with dance, done with music. Next up: cinema and literary arts, and then an epilogue.

Labels: art, art and culture, criticism, culture, dumaguete, history, life

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Tuesday, March 07, 2023

5:33 PM | In Dumaguete, The Arts Flourish Part 9: A Nest of Theatricality

It was perhaps inevitable that theatre in the pandemic—at least in Dumaguete—would be so intimate, and so closely collaborative with the other art forms that seemed to have an awakening under the full weight of social distancing, face masks, and unease. It was not without challenges.

How does one exactly stage a dramatic work that needed bodies in place and the close communion of audience members in a time that demanded restrictions in all of those considerations, and more?

Theatre in Dumaguete was probably the first type of cultural production to feel the swift and brutal changes the emerging COVID-19 demanded. [Back then, we were still calling it “nCOV-19.”] Rent, the acclaimed Broadway musical by Jonathan Larson, was about to make its first bow at the Luce Auditorium on 21 February 2020, directed by Miren Sofia Jordana—when its premiere was hastily cancelled by Silliman University authorities because of growing pandemic fears, only to be permitted a one-night-only staging a few days later, just to accommodate irate ticket holders and the producers. The show did go on—but you could feel the stress on the cast [which included theatre luminaries such as Ima Castro and local ones such as Hope Tinambacan] and the jitters of the audience members. When the company sang “Seasons of Love,” the show’s paean to counting a year in the life at the end of the first act, it brought up unintended existential considerations: Will there still be us a year later? What if the world was truly ending? It was not an ideal atmosphere for an immersive play like Rent, and after that show, the Luce would go dark for many, many months.

Still, we believed the pandemic would be over by June—so we bid our time. We began pouring into our social media, and virtually performing for each other. We discovered Zoom. But plays performed on Zoom just couldn’t hack it, and I’m not sure anyone in Dumaguete ever did try to do a form of pandemic theatre using that route, save perhaps for the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council mounting a presentation of The Story of Dumpawa’s Lullaby, a musical revue I wrote based on the works of ethnomusicologist Priscilla Magdamo, in October 2020. But it wasn’t through Zoom; it was a videotaped presentation that felt like a throwback to Aawitan Kita, the Armida Siguion-Reyna musical television special that aired for over 30 years in the country. [There was another videotaped presentation in June 2022 during Pride Month, with YATTA doing a dramatic reading of Dean Francis Alfar’s one-act play Short Time.]

There were some valiant attempts at doing theatre the old way but with new health restrictions established. I remember attending a November 2020 performance of Karen Schiff’s Breakfast with Willy, directed by Daisy Hannah Catacutan, and starring Andrew Alvarez as an elderly Polish grocery stocker with a painful past and Malka Shaver as a bored graphic designer with an unsure grasp of what she wanted—a nice blend of comedy with something important to say about the horrors of war, immigration, identity, life choices, and breakfast cereal. The performance space was an open-air affair in a small events venue somewhere near the Sibulan Airport—a place I didn’t know existed until the pandemic happened; the stage crew was kept to a bare minimum; and the audience—just a handful of people—were invitees. A few months later, D Salag Collective—composed of Hope Tinambacan, Nikki Cimafranca, Benjie Kitay, and Karen Silva, all co-directors, co-stars, and co-writers—staged Fighting the Invisible on two May weekend in 2021 at the Sidlakang Negros Village Function Hall, with similar health restrictions, and minimal production crew and audience capacity.



Pandemic theatre was small and intimate, and catered to a select few who were hungering for these kinds of performances in a time of utter lack. But it imploded the long-held notion that we needed proper performance spaces—like the Luce—to stage proper drama. The pandemic somehow democratized the artform, gave it a looser structure, allowed it infusion of all kinds of influences.

Sometime in 2022, the writer Daniella Ureta-Spontak decided to put a performance spin to the poetry she had been writing while in Dumaguete. An American with Filipino roots, she had moved to Dumaguete at the tail-end of 2019, hoping to teach at a university and pursue something creative—not knowing that her stay would soon be marked by a very long lockdown. She had earned a BA in English at the University of San Diego in the United States and an MFA in creative writing at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, and she had already been published in multiple literary magazines and had won screenwriting contests [including at Sundance]. Dumaguete felt like a place to grow in creatively before she embarked on something else. Unfortunately, the university job fell through—and then the lockdown commenced, and she found herself concentrating on her creative pursuits full time and hosting a weekly writers workshop in Dauin to help others hone their craft with constructive feedback.

She also turned to poetry: “I didn’t take an interest in poetry until I was 20 when a professor showed us a 13th-century poem about a guy complaining about his STD. I was so amused I started reading more. Then I found myself stuck in a class I loathed with a professor I loathed even more, so I started writing poems to pass the time. I’d written a dozen by the time the semester ended. The following semester, I had the chance to stay in Barcelona and visited countless art museums, but I noticed an urge to do more than simply look at the inspiring paintings. I began to bring a pen and paper. Fast forward ten years, and I’m still writing poems whenever I visit an art museum or gallery.”

That inclination to write poetry in art spaces brought her to MUGNA Gallery in Bong-ao, Valencia, where she would find herself penning poem after poem, prompted by the art she saw. Something was brewing in her mind. She began by hosting a body painting event at Shelter Gallery in Tabuctubig on 2 June 2022, using visiting actor Luka Cvitković as human canvas for local artist Hersley-Ven Casero, Faye Mandi, Dyck Cediño, and Cil Flores. In a sense, that was already a kind of theatre—a performance by four visual artists in a kinetic drama of putting color and shade to the human skin.



By the following month, July 2022, Ms. Spontak was ready to take the next step: use her poetry as the prompt to performance in an art gallery, an ekphratic experiment. Over two nights, she presided over Poetry in Motion, a theatrical piece essayed by Hope Tinambacan, Fionabelle Marie Cabe, Jo Camille, and Mayumi Maghuyop—all of them bringing to life pieces of Ms. Spontak’s poetry using the various spaces of MUGNA Gallery as platform to play out the resonances of the pieces, each performer interacting organically with audience members who were free to roam around the space, often interacting with the performers themselves. The magic of the piece could only be made possible with the intimacy of the venue, and the restricted number of spectators.



The success of Poetry in Motion would lead to its “sequel,” Poetry in Motion II, held at the same gallery three months later, in October 2022—this time with the performers [which included two returnees Hope Tinambacan and Jo Camille, and two new cast members Anna del Prado and Tonya Alviola] interacting with the art of Babbu Wenceslao, who was then exhibiting a kind of retrospective of his works in “Asanamo.”

If you care to notice, one common name threads throughout most of these dramatic presentations in the whole of the pandemic in Dumaguete: Hope Tinambacan—someone who has become a household name considering everything he has done, culture-wise, in Dumaguete. And known to many as poet, singer, composer, teacher, actor, director, lead singer of Hopia, co-founder of the Belltower Project, and co-founder of D Salag Collective. Originally from Oroquieta City [but with Negros Oriental roots], he came to Dumaguete in 2001 to study at Silliman University, where he finished with a degree in mass communication—which might come as a surprise to many, since his collegiate and post-collegiate life revolved extensively around theatre and music. [He would cement his academic ties to theatre eventually by finishing a three-year professional diploma program in acting at the famous Intercultural Theatre Institute (ITI) in Singapore, graduating in 2019.]

Coming to Dumaguete as a youngster was really a homecoming. “I’ve never left,” he says. “I’ve been here for 23 years. I’ve moved around more than thirty times already in that interim. My first impression of Dumaguete was really good, I was very impressed. It was intimidating but it also felt light and happy. I felt that the art scene was very active.” He would go on to join the glee club and various theatre productions while in college, which soon led to more serious headways into the local artistic life.

He has garnered a considerable following as the lead singer of Hopia and the primary instigator of the whole musical community experiment called the Belltower Project—now celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2023—but his heart remains steadfast in the theatre arts. He came into his own with various productions under the rubric of the Youth Advocates Through Theatre Arts [YATTA], the foremost community theatre company in Dumaguete, but after graduating from ITI, he felt that he had to go beyond YATTA and make his own mark in the local theatre scene.

Cue D’Salag Collective.

“I just wanted to add to the theatre scene in Dumaguete,” he says. “The idea came to me when I turned 31. That was always the dream, to create a company that was not youth-based, because I was no longer exactly a ‘youth.’ I learned so much when I went to ITI, and I wanted to go home because I just wanted to create and create theatre. So this was really the offspring of what I learned in Singapore. I wanted to apply what I learned.”

When he returned to the Philippines, the first thing he did was stage HauntXHunt at The Oasis in Florentina Homes on 21 June 2019, a two-act performance with fellow ITI graduate Ted Tac-an, where they essayed a surreal dramatization of people’s secret wants. [Before the performance, Mr. Tinambacan solicited confessional “wants” from the attendees, threading all these into a haunting monologue.] It was supposed to be the opening salvo for what he had planned to do theatre-wise—but not in Dumaguete: “When I came back, I decided, together with Ted, that we would create a theatre group in Oroquieta. Not in Dumaguete, since there was still no theatre group in Oroquieta.”

And then the pandemic happened.

“So the pandemic really affected my plans,” he continued. “I was still so fresh from theatre school, and I really wanted to do something. So I told my friends, like Nikki Cimafranca, that I really wanted to do something, because I really wanted to create—and they really liked the idea.”

The next step involved figuring out what to do: how to exactly start a theatre group, how big it would be, what its name would be, how to put it together. Mr. Tinambacan focused on the idea of a nest, a word that also constituted his first name, “Earnest.” For him, it was a symbol for safety, haven, creativity, industry, nesting, “pag-aalaga,” a safe space for artists to explore, an awakening, a birth. They soon focused on the Bisaya word, “salag,” and since he wanted to make the group a collective, the name became “Salag Collective.” He also put the “D” in there, because he wanted to indicate “Dumaguete” or “drama.”



“What matters to us,” Mr. Tinambacan says, “is what the artist has to say, what he feels, what he can create, and what he can envision. That’s why most of our performances are all about what we know and what we feel, and what we are driven. We really want to give life to local stories, personal stories, stories of people who matter to us, stories of people whose stories are not told, those who cannot speak for themselves, or who are not heard.”

He continued: “What is important to us is ‘animal energy.’ Our group specialize in using the human body, maximizing the capacity of the animal energy of the human being to create, to convey a story, to communicate. This is why we do everything: our music, sound effects, our props, our lighting, and others. This does not mean we don’t embrace technology, but we use technology to support our stories, and not the other way around.”

The members wanted to call it a collective, because they wanted the decision-making to be done by the individuals together as a group, not just having an administrator deciding on everything. “What we want to emphasize is that the artist has to have a say in the decisions of the group,” Mr. Tinambacan says. The group’s growth was also vital: “We also do reading sessions and discussions, to enhance not just our skills but also our philosophy and theory.”

Armed with all these, D’ Salag Collective first performed “Tianggue Laments,” a research performance they did at the local public market. “We went around the tianggue to observe people and happenings, and maximize our senses to hear, to feel, to touch, to see,” Mr. Tinambacan said.

Their first big production was Fighting the Invisible, where they felt they had to showcase that the group was born in the middle of the pandemic, and thus “was an expression of us and the people around us. It described how we started, and described who we are, and showcased what we can do as a group.”

It wasn’t easy to stage the play in 2022. “Dako kayo ang impact sa pandemic,” Mr. Tinambacan said. “But first, there was the impact on our drive—the want, the need, the cravings, the urge to create. Second, when we started, we couldn’t find a venue, and people were not welcoming of us. We went to the park, to the market, to Silliman Beach, to practice, anywhere na lang. Third, in our first performance, we incorporated the mask and the face shield as props. So these became part of our history.”

I asked Mr. Tinambacan what D’Salag Collective hopes to contribute to the artistic life of Dumaguete, and how they plan to reach out to the larger community beyond just the artists. He responded: “We follow this principle we learned from Tadashi Suzuki: ‘To counter this debilitating modernization of the actor’s craft, I have strived to restore the wholeness of the human body in performance, not simply by creating variants of such forms as the Noh and kabuki, but by employing the universal virtues of these and other pre-modern traditions. By harnessing and developing these enduring virtues, we create an opportunity to re-consolidate our currently dismembered physical faculties and revive the body’s perceptive and expressive capacity. Only by committing to do so can we ensure the flourishing of culture within civilization.’ We believe that beyond the spectacle and entertainment, theater should be about the human capacity to communicate, affect, and create change through creative expression and storytelling. Mao na ang among gusto na dalhon sa Dumaguete. Performances and training that would emphasize and maximize the human body’s perceptive and expressive capacity.”

And what’s in the future of the D’Salag Collective? A regular annual calendar of performances and trainings. A capacity to do research-based studies, especially of the traditional forms of performance. A studio. And international performances. “The ultimate goals,” Mr. Tinambacan continues, “is to really be helpful and useful to local theatre. Researching, understanding, and promoting what’s local and traditional, and sharing it with international platforms. I also hope to create a community.”

The group continues to do its part in building community-responsive theatre, hoping that its fledgling beginning in the pandemic gets strengthened as normalcy returns—and theatre, as we have always known it in Dumaguete, thrives again. But this time with groups like D’Salag Collective firmly in its embrace.

Labels: art, art and culture, dumaguete, pandemic, theater

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4:38 PM | Restarting...

Last year, I started a series on the arts in Dumaguete thriving in the pandemic titled "In Dumaguete, The Arts Flourish." I had to stop because of other obligations and the fact that I thought I lost all my transcribed interviews when my old computer conked out in November last year. But it turned out I managed to save those files! So I want to finish this series na. There are four more essays to do, and I'm done. It's my own little contribution to document the development of local arts in the pandemic.

Labels: art, dumaguete, pandemic, writing

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Sunday, November 20, 2022

2:54 PM | Art Dumaguete

I like that gallery hopping can now be a regular thing to do in Dumaguete. A few weeks ago, at the beginning of November, after lunch at the new Señor Juan, a bunch of friends — Hersley, Toulla, Renz, and I — decided to do an impromptu gallery tour after not seeing each other for weeks. [Toulla and Hersley recently arrived from Europe then.] We went to visit Kitty Taniguchi at the Mariyah Gallery at Bogo Junction, where she was doing an exhibition of work by her, and siblings Danni Sollesta and Amelia Duwenhogger. Afterwards, we went to visit the new Arte Gallery along Rizal Avenue, where we caught the last leg of the “UV light” exhibit of Ramsid Labe, Maverick Cuello, Cil Flores, and Daniel Vincent. Loving the energy of established as well as younger Dumaguete visual artists.

Labels: art, art and culture, dumaguete, painting

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