Filipino curators, artists, and creatives responded to the open call for curatorial proposals for the Philippine Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition at la Biennale di Venezia with engaging proposals, evoking the aspirations of Filipinos in the country and across the world.

The proposals demonstrated strong material and discursive potential, touching on myriad concerns and risking propositions for urgent collective action rooted in intimate experience, and exploring diverse artistic expressions (painting, film, sound, performance, and intermedia installations). The proposals revisited the complex Philippine subjectivity and locality in the context of the personal and the planetary, the cultural and the ecological.

The selection of the official representation of the Philippines at the Venice Biennale was guided by criteria that spoke to the attentiveness for material and discourse, the ability to contextualize art forms within the landscape of a national pavilion in Venice, the sensitivity to local concerns and openness to inter-cultural dialogues, as well as the overall sensibility, formal integrity, thoughtfulness, and feasibility.

After careful and thoughtful discussion and contemplation, the jurors came to a decision and chose “Kabilang-tabing ng panahong ito (Behind the curtain of this age),” curated by Carlos Quijon Jr., featuring the work of Mark Salvatus, to represent the country in the world’s most prestigious and prominent international contemporary art exhibition.

Curator Carlos Quijon Jr. (Photo Independent Curators International) and artist Mark Salvatus (Photo Sharjah Art Foundation)

The selected exhibition simultaneously explores currents of mysticism and modernity, the deep past and the looming future, as well as the coincidence of the cosmopolitan and the vernacular. It revolves around the ethno-ecologies of Mt. Banahaw, a three-peaked forested mountain located at the boundary between Laguna and Quezon, and Lucban, the artist’s hometown. It draws inspiration from how Mt. Banahaw has shaped the music and faith of the people. The title comes from the words of Apolinario de la Cruz or Hermano Pule, the radical spiritual firebrand, lodestar of the people of Lucban, who resisted the discrimination of the Spanish Catholic church.

THE TEAM IN CHARGE From left: NCCA chairman and commissioner of the Philippine Pavilion Victorino Mapa Manalo, MuskKat director Corazón Alvina, and Senator Loren Legarda (Photo Elvert Banares)

The deliberations were held on July 21, onsite at the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and virtually, via Zoom. The jury comprised Corazón S. Alvina, director of the Museo ng Kaalamáng Katutubò and a seasoned cultural worker and curator from Manila; Biljana Ciric, an interdependent curator based in Shanghai; Alexandra Munroe, Ph.D., director of curatorial affairs for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project and a pioneering authority on modern and contemporary Asian art and transnational art studies; Victorino Mapa Manalo, chair of the NCCA and commissioner of the Philippine Pavilion; and Senator Loren Legarda, project principal and visionary of the Philippine participation at the Venice Art and Architecture Biennale since 2015.

The Philippine Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition at la Biennale di Venezia will be open to the public from April 20 to Nov. 24, 2024.