Words Amanda Juico Dela Cruz
March 18, 2024

When archival works resurface inspiring works of art or when ordinary items never imagined to be a material for art making are utilized, there is a recovery and rediscovery of one’s very materiality. When disparities and paradoxes start to make sense, they result to a shared reality. When longing is felt and acknowledged, there is an urge to do something. Exhibitions featured this month confront loss, silence, and exclusion in the very space that enable such.

“To Those Sitting in Darkness” by Pio Abad at Ashmolean Museum

“Where many of us who work in museums customarily think of them as places of preservation, communication and inclusion, Abad makes the case for them as places of loss, silence and exclusion,” said Xa Sturgis, In one sculpture, Abad collaborated with Frances Wadsworth Jones to recreate the Kokoshnik tiara once owned by the Romanovs, then by Gladys Deacon, then later by Imelda Marcos. In one portrait is a visual representation of Giolo, a young tattooed Mindanaoan man purchased as a slave to become an exotic display—a portrait of a trafficked body. Informed by world history, Abad remembers his own.

“In Passing” by Nicole Coson at Silverlens Galleries

Nicole Coson has been experimenting on the limitations and possibilities of printmaking by incorporating everyday objects into her art making. Plastic shipping crate is the starting point of the exhibition. This cubic stackable object that is used in the global supply chain for food is used as a visual metaphor for those that do not have a home as they are in endless transit. The use of such material is a confrontation as much as a negotiation with the very material itself. On the canvases are what looks like aerial views of cities with spaces as roads, alleyways, and passageways.

“Fever Dream” by Corinne de San Jose, Jaekyung Jung, Cos Zicarelli, Buen Calubayan, Derek Tumala, Troy Ignacio, Veejay Villafranca, and Mark Salvatus at UP Vargas Museum in partnership with Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panama, Absolute Art Space, and shhh Project

The exhibition is an invitation to imagine and to dream all while grasping the tangible and the real. Artists from seemingly disparate geographical locations—the Philippines, Panama, Taiwan, and South Korea—come together to talk about our shared planetary conditions and to think about our shared futures. Brought together by our shared reality of hustle and bustle, of global warming and wildfires, and of threat of viruses and possible pandemics, we are urged to slow down and to slow time down as artists and their works of art are revealed one at a time over the course of four weeks.

“The saddest song is the one you cannot sing” by Ged Merino at Gravity Art Space

Series of works from Someday this will all make sense comprise the exhibition. The works in the series range from pieces of fabric with embroidery of text and flowers, sculptures wrapped in colorful yarn, reflective surfaces with phrases in Spanish and in English engraved, photographs and light boxes, prints, videos, and terrariums. In #8 it says, “So mi Amor, This song’s for you” while in #37 it says “Take a picture It’ll last longer.” #6 says “Tomo te extrane hoy Que triste estoy.” The works express a sense of longing and the expression is a documentation of a future past.

“Chaos” by Viviana Riccelli at Galleria Duemila

Inspired by encounters and memories, Viviana Riccelli paints the everyday life, and she paints them without overlooking the struggles and tragedies that loom over and come with day to day living. Her works of abstract expressionist paintings radiate a sense of intimacy and tenderness, but provoke fantasies, drives, anxieties and fears, too—all these make up the whole. Her patterns and silhouettes as well as her palette and forms offer meanings and possible narratives all while allowing the viewer to project their own. Intentions are never fully disclosed to give viewers space to see them through their own lived contexts.

“After Almosts” by Ab Coronel, Marc Aran Reyes, and Jay Torres at Art Underground

“What happens after almost?” the poem that accompanies the exhibition ends. The exhibition itself is a collection of visual poems about letting the longing to persist, the loving gaze to fall, the sugar to dissipate, and the desire to expire. In the very words of the poem, “letting circumstances decide themselves.” The works do not offer explosive visual renditions of sadness and of pain, but one that is quiet, seeking life, force, and power in whispers and subtleness. It is the kind that crawls beneath one’s feet and finds its way to crawl up one’s spine, leaving shiver and isolation.