Landscapes of Resistance and Resilience: Exhibitions in December 2024
Words Amanda Juico Dela Cruz
January 3, 2025
This round-up of exhibitions explores the intersection of identity, history, and the natural world through diverse artistic lenses. Pacita Abad’s vibrant works celebrate her Filipino heritage while embracing global influences, using color and texture to convey personal and cultural narratives. Santiago Bose, Stephanie Syjuco, and Michael Joo confront the legacies of empire and colonialism, offering subversive and counter-historical landscapes that challenge dominant narratives. Lena Cobangbang’s works critique land ownership and development, while Junyee’s sculptures reflect humanity’s complex relationship with nature. Angela Panlilio’s ethereal compositions evoke memory and emotion, and Arnold Lalongisip’s The Madrid Collection transforms Madrid into a meditative, monochromatic landscape.
“Pacita Abad: Philippine Painter” by Pacita Abad and curated by Clarissa Chikiamco at Metropolitan Museum of Manila
Pacita Abad: Philippine Painter invites us into the vibrant world of a Filipino artist whose life and work transcended borders, yet remained deeply rooted in her heritage. Curated by Clarissa Chikiamco, the exhibition traces Abad’s first decade of artistic exploration, from her early studies in Washington, D.C., to her return to Manila in 1982. Known as a bold colorist and expressionist, Pacita’s work—alive with color and texture—reflects her global travels and her unshakeable Filipino identity. Through her groundbreaking trapunto technique, blending painting with fabric, she created deeply personal, tactile landscapes that speak to the resilience and beauty of her homeland.
“Fugitive Land” by Santiago Bose, Michael Joo, and Stephanie Syjuco, and organized by Christopher Y. Lew at Silverlens
In the works of Santiago Bose, Stephanie Syjuco, and Michael Joo, art becomes a powerful tool to interrogate the legacies of empire, colonialism, and nationalism. Bose’s Baguio Souvenirs (1976) subverts colonial survey photographs, recontextualizing them as a critique of American occupation. Syjuco’s Body Double (2007) distills the Vietnam War films shot in the Philippines into a silent, geometric landscape, revealing the colonial paradox at play. Joo’s Epi- (Montclair Mariposa Cross-Cut) (2024) uses marble and silver nitrate to conjure an absence of representation, invoking a geological timeline that resists the temporal boundaries of human history and empire. Together, these artists refuse to comply with dominant narratives, instead offering complex, counter-historical landscapes.
Loam is Where The Hearth Is, 2024 Single channel video with audio / Variable
“√L@nDs” by Lena Cobangbang at West Gallery
Lena Cobangbang’s √L@nDs explores the vast, shifting terrains of land, ownership, and power. Drawing from the transformation of rural spaces into real estate, she critiques the paradoxes inherent in land development through a modernist lens. Her tufted carpets—textured, gradient greens—echo H.R. Ocampo’s abstraction of rural scenes, but with a twist: they map out the vast expanses of Villar-owned subdivisions, questioning who truly owns the land. In Loam is Where the Hearth Is, a video projection of burning architectural models conveys destruction and resistance, underscoring Cobangbang’s fierce return to abstraction as a powerful, defiant act of liberation.
“of MAN and NATURE” by Junyee at Altro Mondo Arte Contemporanea
In of MAN and NATURE, Junyee’s sculptural mastery transforms wood and organic materials into a poignant dialogue between humanity and the earth. With reverence for nature, his intricate works—crafted from reclaimed wood, soot, seeds, and even microchips—reveal the delicate balance of creation and destruction. Sculptures of animals, trees, and abstract forms echo the resilience and fragility of life, while bridging the gap between nature and technology. This exhibition invites reflection on sustainability, urging us to consider the consequences of industrialization and the enduring ties between human innovation and the natural world. Each piece calls us to honor and protect the earth.
“Into Light” by Angela Panlilio at Artinformal
In Into Light, Angela Panlilio crafts a delicate dance between shadow and hue. Her poetics of concealment unfurl like a bird’s song in the morning air—soft, deliberate, yet full of possibility. Color, once absent, now glows in measured bursts, a quiet rebellion against the starkness of her past work. Each page feels like an afterimage, a fragment of sky or a fading dusk, inviting us to navigate its subtle contradictions. Here, clarity is a slow burn, and emotion is an elusive trace, guiding us through a suspended space where memory lingers, but the future waits just beyond reach.
“The Madrid Collection” by Arnold Lalongisip at Art Underground Manila
In The Madrid Collection, Arnold Lalongisip captures the soul of Madrid through the lens of his monochromatic vision. This intimate series, composed of only twelve pieces, distills the city's essence into stark contrasts of black and white. Each stroke transcends mere representation, transforming iconic landmarks—like Plaza Mayor and Madrid’s cathedrals—into poems of shadow and light. The fluid curves of Retiro Park’s gardens are met with the precision of architectural form, creating a delicate balance between nature and structure. The collection, rare and refined, is an elegy to memory, inviting viewers to witness Madrid not just as a place, but as a feeling.
