A Deafening Silence
Mike Adrao urges viewers to sit in silence in his new solo exhibition at UP Vargas Museum.
Words & Photos Piolo Cudal
November 26, 2025
In the quiet lobby of the UP Vargas Museum, silence feels almost physical—expanding, pressing in, and echoing. Filipino artist Mike Adrao returns with A Deafening Silence (Nakabibinging Katahimikan), a solo exhibition featuring large drawings, small studies, and resin sculptures that explore what remains after upheaval.
Adrao renewed his deep focus on drawing, treating ink and charcoal not as fixed materials but as living, shifting ones. His works seem caught in a moment of collapse, where pillars bend, ornate furniture sags, and forms appear on the verge of falling apart.
These images have appeared in his work before, but here they are held within a silence that feels dense and overwhelming.
“[Staying silent] is disturbing. Tsaka ironically, I love solitude, mas sanay ako na tahimik ako. Ang funny don yung silence is intolerable siya kasi hindi ka na pwede manahimik sa panahon ngayon. So I think ngayon, more purposeful compared to my other works. Parang mas may direksyon siyang pinapatamaan,” Adrao said in an interview.
Reflection of career and craft
The idea for the exhibition grew out of the COVID-19 pandemic, a global pause that felt less like emptiness and more like a heavy stillness filled with uncertainty and mounting crisis. This tension showed up in Adrao’s imagery.
Solid objects seem to move or dissolve. His classical pillars and furniture hover between past grandeur and imminent ruin, capturing not just decay but the struggle to endure. For Adrao, the silence in these works is not calm. It is the silence of deserted streets, broken routines, and held breath—a silence that forces reflection.
Returning to drawing was both a stabilising practice and a direct engagement with a fragile world. His careful, detailed lines reveal his process, where each mark is a form of reckoning.
Despite the darkness, the works contain a quiet resilience, signalling persistence and refusing to yield to emptiness. Through them, Adrao opens a dialogue between destruction and endurance, instability and structure, silence, and the hidden stories inside it.
Born and based in Manila, Adrao is known for his meticulous technique and his focus on themes of decay, excess, and historical memory. He has exhibited widely in the Philippines and abroad, including Slovakia, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
In a world still navigating the aftershocks of crisis, Adrao’s latest works urge viewers to sit with silence, to listen, to feel its weight, and to look closely at what continues to endure.
