Wednesday, December 11, 2024
7:00 PM |
Casa Paquita
I’ve been wanting to share the photos below for a few months now, but Jaime Ponce de Leon asked me to wait. You see, I’ve loved this old, old house along Pinili Street for many years, and I have always been concerned that the owners were neglecting it and was not seeing its full potential. Then one day, passing by its old location, it was just ... gone. That really made me despondent, and I thought about how many heritage houses in Dumaguete were disappearing, because some owners consider them useless, or their possible restoration would take so much work [and finances]. For the Arrieta family who owned the heritage house, it must have been prohibitive to do the upkeep of an old house, even though they might not have wanted to part with it. Anna May Cruz would later tell me: “My aunt’s family didn’t want to part with it but no one could afford its upkeep. The neglect was not intentional.”
And then I was told that this old house, about to be demolished, was actually bought wholesale, and transferred to somewhere in Fatima Village, restored to its full glory. Tomorrow, December 12, it finally opens as Cafe Maria in Casa Paquita, a restaurant and a gallery. Congratulations, Mikel Teves and Nadia Teves!
[Cafe Maria is named after Maria Arnaiz-Diaz and Casa Paquita is named after Paquita Arnaiz-Ponce de Leon.]
Labels: cafes, dumaguete, gallries, heritage, negros, old houses, restaurants
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
3:54 PM |
More Playtime with Clay!
Made an effort to attend
Kevin Cornelia's clay hand-building workshop at the National Museum of the Philippines Dumaguete [ IG: @nmpdumaguete ] today, again between classes and other to-do's today, because we need to support local culture. Next time, I'll really participate instead of just document the event, and really get my hands [and feet!] dirty. We're at the tail-end of
National Museums and Galleries Month this October! Have you visited your local museums and galleries yet?
Labels: artists, clay, dumaguete, gallries, national museum
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Thursday, July 28, 2022
11:22 PM |
In Dumaguete, The Arts Flourish Part 8: Two Artists
It is not like art-making in Dumaguete has only now began to stir.
The thread of this series on Dumaguete art has always been about how it has thrived, despite the raging pandemic that continues to bedevil and challenge us to this day. The series has followed the string of openings of local galleries that found remarkable footing in the pandemic, and which have now come to shape how much Dumaguete makes, appreciates, and consumes art.
Young Dumaguete artists are coming into their own with astonishing fervency, more in control of the direction they want their art to take—making crucial professional stakes that, upon close scrutiny, were often brought about by realizations they have made about themselves during the lockdown.
Exhibits and performances outside of the academic ghetto, which used to control our cultural calendar, have now become staple fare for culture-hungry Dumagueteños, with new avenues opening up to replace the shuttered spaces the city’s universities used to provide. This is a seismic development, truth to tell.
And new cultural rituals are now being fostered among the locals: gallery-hopping, for example, has suddenly become a “thing,” even my 89-year-old mother is now doing it, much to my surprise and delight when I found about it.
Suddenly, our younger cohorts of visual artists—who have driven this surge, more or less—are now becoming more well-known locally, and gaining traction in terms of recognition nationally, earning not just plaudits but also patrons. This is important.
But for every Hersley-Ven Casero, Xteve Abanto, Jomir Tabudlong, Alta Jia, Iris Tirambulo, Totem Yap Saa, Flomil Rey Labarento, Gerabelle Rea, Faye Mandi, Deadlocks, Paul Benzi Florendo, Mikoo Cataylo, Sara Jean Ruales, Rianne Salvarita, Dan Dvran, and Cil Flores who are now revolutionizing local art not just with the flair of their vision but also the energy of their youth, we also have the Dumaguete visual artists who have come before them, many of whom continue to make great work, and who must be acknowledged.
The OGs of Dumaguete and Oriental Negrense visual arts across several generations—counting among them Albert Faurot [†], Jose Laspiñas [†], Paul Pfeiffer, Kristoffer Ardeña, Maria Taniguchi, Edmund Bendijo, Brenda Fajardo, Sharon Dadang, Babbu Wenceslao, Danni Sollesta, Francisco Villanueva, Hemrod Duran, Jana Jumalon, Razcel Jan Salvarita, Michael Teves, Mark Valenzuela, Susan Canoy, Jutze Pamate, Muffet Dolar Villegas [†], Kennedy Rubias [†], and Kitty Taniguchi—were instrumental in putting Dumaguete on the art map. They made the city the incubator of [and inspiration for] their art at the start of their careers, and many would later go on to make names for themselves in the national and international art world. They paved the way, so to speak. This meant many things: [1] defining [and redefining] what was “local” art, [2] founding [and sometimes detonating] artistic organizations and collaborations [and refining along the way what made for a “Dumaguete art community”], and [3] exploring various avenues of artistic execution and exhibition—mapping the successes and the failures along the way which became, more or less, the current template on which the contemporary art scene has finally developed.
This essay aims to explore the now and the then in that regard, to present two artists culled from these two sets of cohorts of Dumaguete art—Cristina Taniguchi and Cil Flores—to mark their generational differences and similarities, to note the convergences, and to find out how exactly how Dumaguete art has developed over the years in the light of the lives of two local artists.
* * *
Cil Flores is 28 years old, and the world is still all exciting possibilities—even if sometimes the doubts can still sting. On Facebook, she recently posted a screenshot of a quote, which served as a reminder: “Stop ignoring when your talents have been validated in multiple spaces. It’s not a gimmick, it’s not luck, it’s not a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. You are good at this thing. The proof is there. Accept it and act accordingly.” The quote had been culled from musician and writer Kaya Nova, and Cil annotated it with sad emojis.
The self-doubt is understandable—all artists worth their salt have lingering bouts of imposter syndrome—but as of the moment, Ms. Flores really has no cause for concern. Of late, she has been invited to become a participating artist for the Modern and Contemporary Art Festival (MoCAF), a new art festival in Manila that aims for a measure of dynamism in its curation, “to reflect the fast-developing modern and contemporary art scene in the Philippines.” She has been part of various group exhibitions since devoting fully to her art in 2018 as well—and has found herself becoming prolific in the pandemic, establishing relationships with patrons who now collect her art.
That has always been the dream, ever since she was young, although it never became apparent until the last four years. “I started drawing when I was in kindergarten,” she told me. “My sister and I did doodles a lot, and we’d make comic strips of the cartoons and anime we’d see on TV.” That love for doodling, for being creative, didn’t stop in childhood: “I continued drawing on cheap sketchbooks in high school and college, but I never saw art as a career option for me. I was sort of bound to pursue my psychology degree after graduating from college.” But then, a realization: “I somehow made a decision to pursue the path of becoming a professional artist.”
That path started in 2018, with pen and ink on paper as her main medium. It is a path that has only really begun—and to observe Cil Flores now is to see an artist slowly coming into her own, slowly maturing into her craft, slowly finding her voice and her style. It is exciting to take stock of what she has done so far, and to feel the great art that has yet to come. For one thing, she knows her influences—Filipino urban street artists such as SYN, Yeo Kaa, Froilan Calayag, Mister Sasquatch, and TRNZ, to name a few Manila-based artists, as well as international artists like Kim Jung Gi and Lauren Tsai. “I guess I could describe my art style as close to pop and street art, and I usually feature subjects like roots- and rock-like details, in bright red and yellow colors,” she said. “I don’t consider myself as a professional artist yet—just an emerging one. But I want be known as the artist who has passion and grit.”
She has a character she keeps depicting in her works of late—the avatar, if you will, of what she wants to express given her experiences and feelings. Its name is Clae. “Through Clae, I’ve been producing paintings, illustrations, and drawings that feature feelings and situations like hope, grief, frustration, letting go, healing, and even addiction,” she said.
One such piece featuring Clae is a painting titled “Today’s Best,” her entry for this year’s Graphika Manila art book, and the art work that marks the first appearance of this original character. “The work portrays hope in the form of a tiny spark amidst the anxiety, the bad days, the depressive episodes, the days when I feel like giving up. But no matter how tiny the spark is, it is still enough to motivate me to continue living, to keep making art, and to chase my dreams,” Ms. Flores said. “This is why this piece is very personal to me, and why it perfectly describes me as an artist who is determined and passionate about art, despite the struggles.”
What she ultimately hopes to achieve with her is the ability to connect with people. “That’s one of my main goals. If my art means a lot to people, and if I can somehow connect with them and give them inspiration or just simply produce art about situations which they can relate to, then that for me is success,” she said. “I’ve been receiving messages from aspiring creative—and even regular people—who tell me how my art means so much to them because it inspires them, and I have never felt so fulfilled.”
She usually stays up late at night to work as a part-time marketing VA. “But when I’m done working, I proceed to paint, to draw, or to do digital art, until 4 or 5 AM,” she said. “I paint or do art at night because it is the most peaceful time of my day for me. Then I wake up around noontime, have lunch, and proceed to do art again in the afternoon. I usually spend my afternoons doing brainstorming on new ideas for future art pieces. Sometimes I do art studies on paper, or digitally. Sometimes I watch videos of artist interviews.”
She surprised herself by becoming very productive during the pandemic. “I stayed home most of the time,” she remembered. “Although I had an 8-to-5 remote job back then, I was still able to make both traditional and digital art pieces. The quarantine and pandemic anxiety took a toll on me, but the art provided me with comfort. It was basically my refuge, my escape. I remembered making a digital artwork for Graphika Manila titled ‘Pandemic Blues,’ which portrayed what everyone was feeling and doing during the coronavirus crisis.”
What she hopes to do in the immediate future is to help lead the growth of street/urban/pop art in Dumaguete. “I’m also working on extending my reach outside of Dumaguete since I have goals to exhibit in galleries outside the city, especially in top galleries around Luzon.” To her surprise, she had recently received opportunities to exhibit in Manila this year. “That gave me hope, that it was entirely possible for a self-taught young artist from the province like me to gain traction in the Metro art scene. That’s why I’m motivated to work more on my art and my growth as an artist so I can be able to achieve those goals.”
Cil Flores, young artist on the verge.
* * *
On the opposite side of the spectrum is Cristina Taniguchi, the artist that has very much defined how we have known Dumaguete art for years and years. She has become its veritable synonym, and the art gallery she established has been the city’s solitary light in art exhibitions, more or less, for two decades. But a quick look at her story, especially her beginnings, reveals similarities to Cil Flores’ journey of becoming.
“It’s in my spirit. My direction has always been geared towards something creative,” Cristina Sollesta Taniguchi, Kitty to friends, once remarked in a 2013 interview, when she was asked to define the very start of her artistic journey. The creative spark she spoke of had always been inclined to the literary and the visual even in childhood, primarily as a means to establish camaraderie with others. “When I was little,” she would later tell me, “I used to entertain my cousins in Manila with stories and line drawings.”
Art as story.
That was the impulse. And she would carry that impulse further from her childhood in Manila, where she was born in 1952, to Dumaguete where she would grow up.
“In elementary school and in high school, I was always chosen as the class artist,” Ms. Taniguchi recalled. “In college, I won first prize in an on-the-spot painting contest, and after college, I started exhibiting my art works with my brother. I had my first solo show in Manila in the 1990s. This was how I started my artistic career.”
But to expand that nutshell of an artistic beginning, we need to know that the first instance of national recognition she received as a visual artist was an honorable mention she garnered at the 1994 Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards. She would continue participating in the competition in the next few years, and in 2000 and 2003, her works were declared finalists. Meanwhile, she enrolled at Silliman University, finishing her bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication in 1978 and her MA in English Literature in 1985. She wanted to tell stories by writing. She was also a faculty member at Silliman’s Department of English, Literature, and Creative Writing from 1984 to 1989. And then, after an exhibit with her brother Danni Sollesta at the Silliman Library in 1989, she realized this was what she really wanted to focus on—a career in the visual arts.
By the time the 1990s rolled around, she was becoming known in the national art scene for her paintings of luminous women surrounded by totems of mythological beings—sphinxes, angels, winged rams—mixed in with cheetahs and lions and flamingos. You could see traces of Chagall and Kahlo here and there, but the signature is most definitely and uniquely Cristina Taniguchi. Asked what particular piece by her defined her best as an artist, she said: ”Every piece of art that I produced is relevant to me. These are products of different times and periods in my art making, and each moment and effort I have dedicated to the finishing of each piece has its own narrative to tell, as well as theoretical knowledge to digest.”
“I began to take my art-making seriously as a career in the 1990s,” Ms. Taniguchi continued. ”I was intrigued by the new art concepts that were popping up at that time, things like neo-conceptualism and neo-expressionism.” She began to take note of the works of Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and began to study their approaches to art-making. Around her, local artists were subscribing to tenets of feminism and social realism, which also influenced her—“but I was also looking for my own personal kind of aesthetics and approach to art making,” she said. “From the very beginning, I knew that my art would be based on the concept of personal mythology. I was, and still I am, interested in the fundamentals of human existence and the universality of human life, more especially with regards the status quo of women.”
She began exhibiting in solo shows, including ones at the De La Salle University and at the Ayala Museum in Makati. Still, she could not entirely turn away from her literary beginnings. In 2002, she became a special fellow for poetry at the famous Dumaguete National Writers Workshop [now the Silliman University National Writers Workshop], especially handpicked by the late Edith L. Tiempo. [Two of her poems from that workshop, “I Went to Tokyo to Know Its Crows” and “Blue Space for the Crows Painted White,” were later published in 2006 in the now defunct the Philippines Free Press.] Those poems were also accompanied by artworks she made depicting crows, but the experience also made her realize that her creative force now primarily involved holding paintbrushes and clay, more than the pen. The need to tell stories now occupied primarily the visual.
Together with her daughter Maria Taniguchi, she was invited to do an exhibition for the centennial celebration of Silliman University in 2001, which became Pag-usbong Kalangitan. That same year, she exhibited Who Owns Women’s Bodies at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. In 2005, she was invited to her first international show, as an exhibit participant at the 2nd Beijing International Art Biennale Exhibit at the Millennium Center in Beijing, China—a feat she would repeat in the next two years. In 2010, she was one of the participating artists for The Sculpture Creative Camp at the 11th Asian Arts International Festival in Beijing, China. In 2012, she joined the 5th Luxor International Painting Symposium in Egypt.
Through it all, Dumaguete was home, her preferred base. “This place is my artistic nest,” she said. “I’ve produced most of my works in Dumaguete, and there’s no denying that this place has a lot of bearing in the making of my art. This place provides me the cosmic space and the time for the making of my art—this is where I digest everything.”
“Digesting” means staying put at Mariyah Gallery [a working gallery in Bogo that she established in 1992], dividing her days between doing domestic work in the morning and her art in the afternoon, and then “take care of matters pertaining to the gallery mostly in the evenings.”
Mariyah Gallery began on a lark—carved out of an existing house that sits on 7,000 square meters of property in the western fringe of Dumaguete City. It started out as a complement to a small restaurant she designed to be an alternative culinary experience from the eating establishments that dotted the Rizal Boulevard at that time. “Some good friends in Cebu City assisted me in putting up the place, from mere idea into materialization. The restaurant was honestly a bit out of the way—but the art gallery was really my main prerogative. I was already deep into the arts the year we opened the restaurant/gallery, and my aim was to see art and culture moving in the city when practically there was nothing happening at all.”
She realized even then, especially with the lack of a proper art scene in Dumaguete, the challenges involved in sustaining the venture. “It was hard to operate an art gallery in a place where the art market had not yet fully developed. This was a real challenge. I knew that the gallery couldn’t survive without other financial sources—but to be honest, I was not so concerned about that,” she admitted. “It was enough that I was able to make good use of the little space that we have. Even today, I feel the same.”
The specific challenges she faced in 1992 are the reasons why Mariyah Gallery does not have a regular monthly changing exhibition to this day. “Mariyah Gallery is not really a commercial gallery,” Ms. Taniguchi said. “Every time we organize art events with exhibitions, we have to shell out huge amounts for the expenses.” These are resources they do not readily have, so they have learned to do things in their own particular ways: “Over the years the gallery has undertaken many art and cultural activities, with partners. For example, we are advocates of terracotta art, so the gallery initiated—with the assistance and partnership of the Dumaguete City LGU—the first and second terracotta art festivals in 2006 and 2007, which landed full coverage in a national newspaper, a boon to city tourism.” The gallery has also served as conduit for other cultural organizations. In May 2008, for example, it collaborated with the Filipino Heritage Foundation to host the nationwide closing ceremony of the National Heritage Month.
“What Mariyah Gallery is,” Ms. Taniguchi continued, “is a working art gallery. What I mean is, our prime objective is not to show and sell. We partner with other organizations to move culture, and to undertake things for the sake of art alone. One very important event that we worked on was the Visayas Visual Artists Exhibit and Conference, or ViVA-ExCon. This was in 1992, and ViVA ExCon was still in its infancy. The event we initiated was actually just a small program of activities for Visayan artists, and our participation in it was just incidental—but it was good. Mariyah Gallery was able to open its space to wider horizons in the arts, and we were able get to know many of the significant art personalities in the Visayas, as well as from other parts of the country. To my mind, this event was instrumental in forging the present connectivity among artists in the Visayas specifically. Mariyah Gallery has historically grown with ViVA ExCon. The second ViVA-ExCon, held in Dumaguete in 1994, was the deciding point for the event to continue and mature—and we were a huge part in that undertaking.”
The pandemic was not disruptive in the flow she had already established in her daily routine as a working artist. “Except for the cancellation of some trips related to art activities and limited movement for the gallery, art life went—goes—on,” she admitted. “I was able to produce work that showed my response to the pandemic, as well as to some adverse events in our country, like the eruption of Taal in 2020.”
Mariyah Gallery, too, is surviving the pandemic. “We were able to hold two art exhibits in 2020 at the height of the pandemic,” Ms. Taniguchi said. “And in 2022, the gallery started welcoming visitors again, but limiting entry to around five people at a time. In 2021 we were able send works to Cebu to participate in the First Visayas Art Fair at Montebello Hotel. We were also able to participate in the online art sales of Art in the Park.” And Mariyah Gallery will continue to hold art activities, she said. Its art residency program will soon open again, with one Manila artist scheduled to take up residence soon; a preview art exhibit is already in the works.
And what of the future of her vocation?
“I am in the summit of my life,” Ms. Taniguchi said. “I don’t think about the future of my art anymore. It is just natural for me to do art every day, since it has become my way of life and career. The matter of the future of my art—I leave that to time. My art undergoes evolution as life goes on.”
[To be continued…]
Labels: art, art and culture, artists, dumaguete, gallries
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Saturday, July 02, 2022
6:42 AM |
In Dumaguete, The Arts Flourish Part 6: The Joy is in the Process
It is Thursday, the 2nd of June, and Vince Lopez has not slept.
He has not slept fitfully in the past two or three months, and more so in recent days, because of work. There is work to be done in the daylight hours as he sets about preparing for the opening of the new MUGNA Gallery and the exhibit that comes with that fact. And then, when night falls, there’s work to be done with his regular job as a data and systems engineer for a major entertainment company back in the U.S.—remote work, for sure, but the pressure and the workload remain the same. He has learned to contend with the deft juggling of both, but right now, rest feels like a luxury he can barely afford. There’s so much work to be done.
Still, to the observant eye, he looks unflustered by all of these—although one can spy a hint of a tiredness around the eyes, which even he admits to having: “When Saturday comes and goes,” Mr. Lopez says, “I’ll be getting a three-hour massage.”
By Saturday, he means 4 June 2022—the scheduled opening of MUGNA Gallery, arguably the first of its kind to exist in ages in Dumaguete, although technically speaking it is situated in Bong-ao, Valencia, just right outside the poblacion, along the Jose E. Romero Road that connects Dumaguete to its hilly neighbor in the mountainous west.
Together with his husband George Kuhn, a retired American Airlines pilot, Mr. Lopez has set about this almost herculean task of finding exhibition space to celebrate local artists, and the buzz in town has been tremendous. Everyone wants to see how MUGNA Gallery comes to be, in a mixture of celebration and curiosity. Everyone is also eager to see Jana Jumalon-Alano’s first solo exhibition in many years. [Disclosure: I curated her first solo show, Everything About This Girl, for the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council in 2015.] And the local art world—including artists and patrons from as far away as Bacolod and Cebu—are trooping in to celebrate and to examine, clearly a respite for everyone from pandemic anxieties and isolation.
“It’s tiring, of course, this whole business of opening a gallery and throwing a party for everyone—but I’m actually enjoying the process,” Mr. Lopez says.
It must feel like a new adventure for him, a New Yorker by way of Manila, who never imagined himself becoming a gallerist. Mr. Lopez comes from a family of bankers and accountants, and given that, his choice of a career—his interest growing up was in computer science—proved an anomaly. He studied at the De La Salle University, and later on, attended the University of Santo Tomas, where he earned a degree in electronics and communications engineering. When he was eight, his mother relocated to the U.S., and he stayed behind with his father and one of his brothers to finish his schooling.
“But America has always been the dream,” he admits. And so, when the opportunity came for him to migrate as well, he took it. This was right after college, when he turned 22. It was not a hard change because he was already looking forward to it—although admittedly the hardest part of the move was leaving his friends, who had become his family in Manila, behind. “The good part was my reunion with family,” he says. His mother lived in Queens, New York—and the diversity of its neighborhoods [composed of many Latinos and Filipinos] somehow made him feel at home.
He took his new American life as an adventure, replete with challenges he willed himself to conquer slowly and with determination—a personality trait that would define for the most part his career, and later his life as a gallerist in Dumaguete. Even though he had gone to the U.S. before on regular holidays, this time around he knew things would be a bit different, because this was now about an opportunity to build a life. “It was not entirely easy, because I did not have the work experience I needed to start that life, so it was hard for me to find a job,” he says. He started as a clerk, then began climbing the corporate ladder for a few years.
But he soon left the corporate world to pursue a passion: photography. He decided to study it full time, and then practiced it for a couple of years. The advent of digital photography, however, sideswiped him; he did not find the transition easy. He decided to go back to corporate work.
By then Mr. Lopez had amassed a wide experience in data management, and he landed a job at a popular entertainment conglomerate in 2012, eventually becoming its systems architect. The conglomerate was spinning off one of its companies, and they took him in to design their technology workflow and data flow. He found himself enjoying the business, especially given that the company was part of the entertainment industry—and he found its challenges very dynamic and creative.
This creativity in the work satisfied him: he knew he had always gravitated towards it. Aside from his brief foray into photography, his artistic side involved an abiding love of gallery and museum hunting, which became one of his favorite hobbies in New York. His workplace was just a fifteen-minute walk to the Chelsea Galleries, and he’d find himself seeing its various collections and exhibits during his lunch break. It was a passion that he shared with Mr. Kuhn. They loved art. For them, going to museums and galleries was an escape from the humdrum, almost a necessity.
And then, after his retirement as pilot, Mr. Kuhn made the decision to live in Negros Oriental. He soon found a place in Valencia—and for the next ten years, Vince would find himself coming over to Dumaguete regularly to visit his husband on extended vacations, although New York was still home and workplace. The visits became longer and more regular—until finally Mr. Lopez himself made the decision to move to Dumaguete as well.
They now live in Sagbang in the foothills of Valencia, in a sprawling property that has a fantastic view overlooking Dumaguete and the sea beyond. “I love it there. I chose to live there because it’s quiet peaceful,” he says. “And the view is breathtaking, and it is away from the hustle and bustle of Dumaguete and far away from the chaos and intense energy of New York.” Plus the couple now keeps a handful of dogs, and adopted beautiful stray cat named Tiger.
The house in Sagbang, and the property that surrounds it, remains a work in progress—and by design. “We realized that the construction and landscaping work we were doing was helping find work in the immediate community, helping local people in their livelihood,” Mr. Lopez says. “But this is not charity, I must say. We’re also getting good work out of it.”
It’s a local way of doing things that he has come to appreciate, because it provides a stark contrast to doing work in the U.S. “There, everything is in black-and-white, pure business, pure transaction,” he says. “Here, every project we undertake seems to be about building things together—even building a community, helping each other in many levels.” [It is that idea of community he responds to the most, and which has led to his newest project.]
Mr. Lopez has come to love Dumaguete, which for him is a “modernized probinsya.” The city has been a nice surprise. “It is a weird blend of country and city, a place in between,” he says—and says that its charms are incomparable to many other cities in the Philippines. He heard before of Dumaguete’s famous art scene—but it was not quite apparent to him in the beginning. There was his timing. He had only settled for good in Dumaguete just as the pandemic hit, and that reputed “thriving cultural scene” went largely missing or transferred to Zoom.
Once in a while, before COVID-19 made the world lock down, he would visit Subida in Valencia to shop for souvenirs to take back to the U.S., and that was when he met the artist Jana Jumalon. He discovered her paintings on the second floor of a shop, and the magnificence of her work surprised him. He bought one of her older paintings. Then he began getting introduced by Ms. Alano to other local artists—among them, Hersley-Ven Casero and Iris Tirambulo-Armogenia. For Mr. Lopez, he found the new conversations he was having with local artists interesting and eye-opening. “For me, there is no better way to observe how an art community evolves other than through the eyes of its artists, and through their works,” he says.
He was introduced to their works, which he appreciated—but whenever he’d ask them where he could find more of their art, he was dismayed to know there were virtually no galleries in town that showcased them. Mariyah Gallery, yes. The Ariniego, yes. Restaurants, yes. But each one had peculiarities that made them as art spaces somewhat challenging.
The kernel of an idea started forming.
“There was just so much talent around. And George and I felt that talent was deserving of being given a spotlight through a dedicated exhibition space,” Mr. Lopez says. “We felt the need. And we were also excited about sharing the experience of the community, and supporting the local artists. That was the inspiration. If we did not see the potential, or see the talent that existed, creating a gallery would have been farthest from our minds.”
And then the pandemic hit, and the idea was subsequently abandoned while most people—the Lopez-Kuhn couple included—lived the next two years in isolation like the rest of the world. But the world stopping did not stop them from supporting artists who needed their help, and that was when they realized that the pandemic was also instrumental in making them return to the idea of creating a gallery. “Maybe it was the energy we felt. Good energy. The fire within the local artists became much stronger because of the pandemic. There was an explosion, a need to create,” Mr. Lopez says. Responding to that energy, they retrieved their business plan. By November 2021, things started rolling for sure.
They started with the name: “Mugna” seemed like the best bet. They wanted a Bisaya word, and a meaningful word that was also easy to the ear of the international art market they wanted to penetrate. “Using a meaningful word from the local language allows a potential audience to learn a new word and also the meaning of it—and then promotes the place where it’s coming from.” He actually started with “Mugna-on,” but liked its abbreviated version. He also liked that mugna meant “creativity.” I also quickly reminded him that mugna also meant “to start,” or “to rush into the challenge of creating and doing,” as in: “Mag-mugna ‘ta!”
Finding the space was the easy part. The space had always been there. They were already renting, for some years, the unit in a building, which fronted the Uypitching property in Valencia. In fact, they made it their residence while they were building their house in Sagbang. When their house was completed, they turned the Bong-ao unit into a storage place.
“The way it was laid out, I always felt the unit would work as a gallery,” Mr. Lopez says. “But the logistics of renovating the space was a bigger undertaking. We had to remove beams from the walls to go for a seamless look.” There were myriad challenges as well, like lighting up the space appropriate for exhibiting art, and for that they consulted a lighting engineer. This was one among many stories Mr. Lopez had about sourcing materials and equipment as well, but they found local partners who worked hard to find what he needed. “I was very hands-on, because I really wanted a proper set-up for the pieces we were going to exhibit,” he says.
Mr. Lopez is also hands-on with the path he wants the gallery to take. Starting with the exhibitions, he wants to position MUGNA as a gallery of consequence, putting a spotlight on local artists at least for 2022. Then shortly after that, MUGNA will undertake programs and workshops to bring in the larger community, to allow groups within that community to take part in the exhibitions, and to take part in the creation of art. The mural outside the exhibition space is the first project in that community program--a work of bayanihan effort by selected artists in the community. “Murals challenge the notion that walls are merely functional,” Mr. Lopez says. “Walls become platforms for the imagination and can raise the conversation on community values.”
In the future, MUGNA Gallery will start bringing in artists from outside Negros Oriental or even the Philippines. It will take part in national and international art fairs. It will continue to do workshops and other artistic programs—including opening their Sagbang property as a potential retreat and residency for artists.
Mr. Lopez and Mr. Kuhn know there will be challenges. They love art, but they also know they are not business people entrenched the art world, and this is completely new territory for them. “But it’s our passion that drives us, and in a way, that’s an advantage,” Mr. Lopez says. “Because we are not doing this based on the norms of the business, or based on what is expected. We’re doing this the way we want to do it. Still, the challenges remain. Setting up a business like this, you have to know the best practices. But we’re figuring it out, and we do have good support, from friends primarily, here and in the U.S.”
The challenge is considerable, but that does not perturb Mr. Lopez.
“I’m actually not scared about where this could go,” he admits. “I’m very realistic about things. This could go up, or this could go down.” For him, however, the effort is the clincher: “What’s most important for us is that we try. Because even if it doesn’t work out, we’ve gotten so much out of it already—just the whole experience of this, and the people that we’ve worked with. Our mission already started even way before MUGNA opened its doors: we enjoy supporting artists, and we appreciate the give-and-take. And so we are here to enjoy the process.”
That enjoyment of the process is quite palpable in the way Mr. Lopez has curated Ms. Alano’s exhibition—which is done in beautiful simplicity, chosen with a nose for personal and national history, edited with flair to a few specific pieces [and also proves remarkable for what it leaves out], and arranged with respect to the evolutions of Ms. Alano’s work as an artist.
Tierra Quemada, which has extended its run until July 10, essentially showcases Ms. Alano’s prowess as a sculptor and ceramic artist—and for that we get an exhibit that is incredibly tactile in their power, and moving for their significations, which can only be thoroughly gleaned if viewers look closer, and in some cases, feel more intently with their hands. It is an exhibit that intends—given its title [which means “scorched earth”]—to burn you with the anger of its story.
There are assorted sculptures and ceramic pieces that make up the exhibit, but the two main pieces that feels most immediate are the towering works titled “Fortress” and “Fuego”—the first one a work in papier-mâché and found objects which Ms. Alana first exhibited in 2014 for the 13th VIVA ExCon Biennale of the Visayan Islands, and the second one of a more recent vintage that mirrors the height, the images, and the stylistic ambition of the first, but this time made of clay. Between them, you have almost a decade of Ms. Alano’s work and evolution as an artist—in a sense making this exhibit a kind of a retrospective, except that it has cannily omitted the paintings from the artist’s oeuvre.
I have always found “Fortress” such a compelling work ever since I set eyes on it in 2015. Part of what makes it compelling is the story behind it, given Ms. Alano’s roots as a Zamboangueño. After the siege of Zamboanga in 2013, which saw many houses burned to the ground, Ms. Alano went to the site of the conflagration and started gathering objects from it—and assembled them into this tragic watch tower which, according to Stephanie Frondoso in her copy for the exhibit catalogue, is a symbol “intended to illuminate tragedies that occurred and act as a space for memories of what has been lost.” There are small windows in it that invite you to look closer, but the things we behold in them and around them are kind of tricky, because they denote nostalgia, but they also denote destruction.
With “Fuego,” Ms. Alano streamlines everything by turning the tower of mementos of the 2015 work into a demonstrable towering inferno—a clay blaze on top of several clay boxes stacked on each other, imprinted with almost hieroglyphic swirls and shapes that recall, in a way that invites rethinking, the found objects from “Fortress.” The artist means the work to be an exorcism of sorts.
That Ms. Alano’s work has provided the birthing pieces inaugurating MUGNA Gallery as an artistic space feels very much like a collaboration of the highest order, and one that informs the other in significant ways. MUGNA has given a local artist her due after years of showcasing extraordinary work in various group exhibitions, and the artist has given the gallery an imprint of significance—that it is a place that recognizes fantastic talent, and will strive hard to showcase that talent in the best way possible, in the most exacting of processes.
It is a process of the most joyful kind. [To be continued…]
Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, gallries, painting
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Thursday, June 16, 2022
6:31 AM |
In Dumaguete, The Arts Flourish Part 4: Coffee and Art
To see the works of Flomil Rey Labarento in the light of his recent solo exhibition, At the Moment, which opened [and closed] at the new Shelter Gallery in Tabuctubig a few weeks ago, is to see an artist finally coming to his own—with a glorious new voice and an intriguing technique that make his latest works as a whole feel very much like an arrival.
I think back, for example, to the first works by him I’d seen—and their comparison to what I see now is an evolution I have no other way of acknowledging except to applaud. In paintings like “The Boy Above,” or “To Feel,” or “To React”—works Mr. Labarento exhibited in a 2017 group show at the local mall—we got an artist not quite fully formed, although in retrospect you could see the origins of his style already emerging piecemeal: the pull towards portraiture, the tendency towards the malleability of features, the showcase of ordinary people. But you knew at first glance that this was artist still trying to find his voice. In the case of these early works, you could see the extraordinary influence of Hersley-Ven Casero, from the ubiquitous golden tint to the display of whimsy. One old work by Mr. Labarento in particular, ”The Gentle People,” which is a mélange of faces spread across the canvas, quickly reminded me of Mr. Casero’s tendency to litter most of his paintings’ backgrounds with line drawings of people’s faces.
This was to be expected. Mr. Casero, after all, was his teacher when Mr. Labarento found himself enrolling in Fine Arts at Foundation University and then beginning to participate in art exhibitions around Dumaguete. Soon after, the boy from Calayugan, Valencia found himself becoming enamored enough with his craft to decide to become a full-time artist, molded by the likes of Mr. Casero even in his photography, devouring what inspired him, and letting their influence simmer in his own works.
One such inspiration was Onib Olmedo. Just before the world locked down for the pandemic in 2020, Mr. Labarento was in Manila for Art Fair Philippines and there encountered the drawings of Mr. Olmedo. His discovery was like lightning for him—and it was impactful enough that he felt moved to develop more his skills in drawing. When the pandemic happened, he spent the lockdown in Dumaguete constantly drawing and using a variety of media on paper, looking for what felt most essential. “I was going around town with various art materials in my bag, and I would draw not just in the house, but also in places like El Amigo,” he said.
He knew what he wanted to achieve: to focus on the human figure, and to find ways to highlight it using its negative space. He went by the feel, not usually constrained by details, and sometimes even leaving his experimentations unfinished. He would often get inspired by the children playing in his neighborhood for the entire day: sometimes he would capture their rambunctious play by photographing them, and sometimes by drawing them. His eyes would be quick to notice how kinetic things were—how “in the moment” they could be—and he would observe such things as a child wearing only half a pair of a tsinelas. And he would draw that child just so—someone playing a game with only one slipper on. He would later on realize that all the drawings he made of these children and other people constituted a “pandemic project” for him. “These drawings became virtually my diary of those COVID-19 days,” he said.
That “pandemic diary” became his exhibition at Shelter Gallery, his first solo show, which opened in May.
The drawings took up most of the space at the gallery—a virtual litter of paper pinned to the walls, and on each of them, a human figure in pen and ink, sometimes fully in black, and sometimes complemented by details in red ink. They tell individual stories of fascinating details. A man in an Asian squat cradling his head in a note of sadness. Another man carrying a baby with the word “Love” emblazoned on the baby’s shirt. Two buskers doing their musical take, one on guitar, and the other on a harp. A boy carrying a heavy sack with the word “Ayuda” printed on it. A pot-bellied bald guy without a shirt smoking a cigarette while in the act of telling a story. And birds. Lots and lots of birds.
Then there were the paintings—essentially oversized versions of these human drawings but less idiosyncratic. As a set, they seem to depict a nuclear family—a woman in a bewildered turn of head, a man stifling a yawn [or a laugh], and a child [or is that a bald old man drinking Tanduay?]—all three caught in very human poses and expressions, done up in muted colors.
Here lies the exquisite evolution of Mr. Labarento’s art: a simplicity in the forms, a clarity in the lines, a minimalism in the details—and what’s more, experimenting with glued-on strings of yarn to bring out those lines, which lend a tantalizing texture to the works. He had earlier experimented with this technique with two works [“Yesterday Tomorrow” and “TIG”] that he contributed to the group show Fast Times, which opened in March also at Shelter Gallery, but the latest works for At the Moment prove to be the major departure—and arrival.
* * *
That Mr. Labarento would land his first solo exhibition in such a thoughtful style, and curated so carefully, is testament to Shelter Gallery’s seriousness in carving out a space for art in a city that has—surprisingly enough—lacked sorely of it until very recently. In its short history, the gallery—which is located at the southern prong of Jose Romero Road in Tabuctubig before it converges with its northern twin to create the highway that leads to Valencia—has already become a haven for Dumaguete’s young artists, and its exhibit openings are parties that have become known for their flair and color.
Its founding is also one for the books, and centers on a young couple: self-proclaimed coffee guy Howard Wong and visual artist Faye Mandi. That diversity of interest—coffee and art—is the very formula that led to Shelter’s existence.
Ms. Mandi—full name Phoebe Marie Mandi—was born and raised in Zamboanga City. She took up Accountancy at the Ateneo for a year, but then realized that what she really wanted to pursue was the arts, and duly transferred to Silliman University where she majored in Painting in 2015. After graduation in 2019, she worked as a freelance graphic artist and designer. Around that time, she met Howard Wong.
Mr. Wong is the proprietor of Coffee Collective. He has Bayawan roots, but was born and raised in Manila where he earned a Pharmacy degree at the University of Santo Tomas. This led him to work in the pharmaceutical industry, but he soon found himself dabbling in real estate, and now, in food and beverage.
Both never expected to be in Dumaguete.
For Ms. Mandi, it was an existential search that led her here. “I was in a very dark place when I moved to Dumaguete,” she says. “But Dumaguete did not fix me. It wasn’t exactly the solution I was hoping for. [But by] my senior year in Fine Arts, I wanted to take control, and I decided that I wanted to change my life. And that I wanted to change it here, in Dumaguete. This was where I wanted to be.” She saw that the city was filled with artists and musicians and writers—and knew the place was special. “I knew it the moment I got here. I felt like I belonged,” she says.
For Mr. Wong, it was a family tragedy that made him move back here from Manila. “Before 2017, I’ve only been here only twice,” he says. “But I had to move back here to help with our family business, because our grocery store in Bayawan burned down. Life here was very different to what I was used to back in Manila. I used to think that life in the province was slow, boring, and stagnant. Not anymore.”
He gave in to his entrepreneurial instincts, and opened Coffee Collective in its original location along Aldecoa Drive—a month before the pandemic. Miraculously, it thrived even after the lockdown—and soon he opened another branch near the Silliman University Medical Center. When he opened what is now the main branch at The Henry Resort in Bantayan, he hired Ms. Mandi to do the art in his café.
Later, when he eventually had to close the first two branches of the café because of pandemic realities, he had at his disposal an extra set of coffee machines he didn’t need to install at The Henry. By then, Ms. Mandi had an idea: why not open a space that would cater to both art and coffee? A gallery with a coffee shop felt like the perfect melding of both their interests.
It was a prospect that invited trepidation, but the pandemic emboldened her. Besides, she had always dreamed of eventually putting up a gallery, perhaps after making a successful run as a visual artist. She thought she could pursue that by exhibiting in Cebu or Manila. “But last year, in 2021, I realized how much I loved Dumaguete,” she says. “We have so many talented artists and a community of people who genuinely appreciate the arts, so why couldn’t Dumaguete be the dream instead? Howard loves coffee, and I love art—so it’s really great to be able create a space that can fit both our passions.”
This was around November 2021 when the idea glimmered.
By December, they found a place that used to be a store for livestock feed—small enough to be manageable, and near enough to downtown to make it accessible. [Robinsons Place Dumaguete is only a stone’s throw away.]
By January 2022, they were ready to open shop and put on their first exhibition.
The show that opened that month was Ripples, a collaborative exhibit by Ms. Mandi and guest artist Hersley-Ven Casero—an accidental pairing that needed to be done because Mr. Casero had just succumbed to COVID-19, and was not in perfect form to do a full solo exhibition. Into that challenge Ms. Mandi went, and the two created several canvasses on site, side by side, in the very same position and under the very same spotlights they were later exhibited. Mr. Casero lent their works figures in whimsical fashion, and Ms. Mandi complementing them with her now trademarked swirls and textures. The centerpiece work, “Tell Me a Story,” is a giant of both size and drive. It occupies an entire wall—perhaps the biggest canvas both artists have ever worked on. And it occupies a worthy conceit—in its depiction of a girl holding a birdcage and surrounded by fish and birds while floating above the ocean, we are invited to connect the dots to make our own narrative, an immersive work that underlines what both artists think about their art: as a medium to tell stories.
Since its opening in January, Shelter has hosted two group shows, and a happening titled Canvas, which invited four local artists—Mr. Casero and Ms. Mandi together with Deadlocks and Cil Flores—to train their brushes and paint on the skin of a live human body, an event cooked up by writer Danielle Spontak. It is with events like this that one can make a claim that the gallery is not just a space for art; it is a vibe.
It is also a place where one’s artistic impulses are encouraged to thrive. In that sense then, the gallery’s name is purposeful. “It is clear to me that environment plays a very important role in growth so I wanted to create a space where artists could feel safe—like they aren’t all alone,” Ms. Mandi explains. “I wanted to give the artists a space where they feel appreciated and encouraged, a place where someone believes in them. It may seem small but I know having someone believe in your art makes all the difference.”
She continues: “The gallery is very artist-friendly and our main priority is providing a location for showcasing art, giving them a space for experimentation and exploration, where they could be themselves and be proud of it.” She makes a point about the gallery as a “joint effort,” even a community project: “Everyone helps out when they can. Right now, it’s not about what it is to me, it’s about what it can be for others. The goal is for the Dumaguete art scene and its artists to be recognized—and the only way we can achieve that is by empowering our artists, supporting them, and giving them the right environment to grow in.”
* * *
In June, the artist Mikoo Cataylo unveiled his solo exhibition Pakigbisog sa Kailaloman at Shelter—an immersive terra cotta display that is at once a wonderland and a warning. In the gallery’s limited exhibition space—the walls painted blue to simulate the depths of the seas—he has created an installation of coral reefs made of clay, standing on real sand. And here and there, he has littered the depiction of this natural landscape with completely unnatural objects [also made of clay]: many rubber slippers and many liquor bottles—both symbolic of the trash we have made of our oceans. But it is not an entirely negative story Mr. Cataylo offers: in his work, he posits that these garbage interlopers are actually being consumed by the living corals themselves to eventually make them become a part of its grand architecture. But that is if they remain living for long.
It is art as environmental statement, nurtured Shelter-style.
And while you’re at it admiring the art work, grab a latte at the hidden café at the back.
[To be continued…]
Labels: art, art and culture, dumaguete, gallries
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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