Announcement from UP Vargas Museum
February 4, 2010
Persistent Visions will run until February 12, 2010 only instead of the original schedule of March 30, 2010. This is to give way to the exhibit Vargas Collects History that will open on February 23, 2010.
UP Vargas Museum Facebook Account
January 27, 2010
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Curtains: a film in three parts
January 10, 2010
Curtains: a film in three parts
a project by Camilo Ontiveros and Michelle Dizon
14 January 2010, Thursday
Panel Discussion, 4pm
Exhibit Opening, 6pm
15 January 2010, Friday
Walk Through with the Artists, 1pm
Third Floor Galleries
UP Vargas Museum
Curtains: a film in three parts asks toward the politics and ethics of the field of vision, especially how it relates to geographies and events that appear distanced or apart from one’s everyday reality. The exhibit takes a filmic approach to the gallery installation and is concerned with the experience of duration and the act of looking itself.
The project is composed of three parts with text, photographs, and a curtain woven from burnt textile collected at the ruins of marketplace in Mindanao. Suggestions of disaster punctuate the exhibition with broken bottles, the carcass of a burnt dog, and fragments of textile that bear the traces of a fire. Yet, throughout the work these suggestions of disaster are consistently paired with images of anonymous windows, whose focus is not on the view outside but rather on the window itself.
Curtains: a film in three parts expands the field of vision to not only what we see, but also, to what we do not see. Instead of taking for granted the oft-assumed statement that art is a window onto another world, it offers a curtain, and asks what might be seen by not seeing.
On January 14, 4pm as a prelude to the exhibit opening, a panel discussion with scholars and activists on the question of Mindanao will be held. Confirmed panelists include Herbert Docena from Focus on the Global South. This discussion is co-sponsored by the Global Commons Foundation.
A gallery walk through with Camilo Ontiveros and Michelle Dizon will be held on 15 January at 1 pm. Admission to this activity is free of charge.
The exhibition will travel in April to the Redcat Gallery, Los Angeles. The works of Ontiveros and Dizon will be part of the collaborative project titled, Not Very Far Apart.
Camilo Ontiveros holds a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. Ontiveros is co-founder of Lui Velazquez, a space in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico that facilitates critical perspectives on contemporary cross-disciplinary issues, practices and events by inviting artists to participate in short-term residencies. Ontiveros has exhibited internationally in places such as Getty Center in Los Angeles, Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, CECUT in Tijuana, Contemporary Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, Exit Art Gallery in New York, and Cesto Senso in Italy among others.
Michelle Dizon is an artist, filmmaker, and writer. Her projects are concerned with questions of postcoloniality, globalization, social movements, and historical memory. She has taught at the California Institute of the Arts and is currently on the faculty of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Dizon holds an MFA from the Interdisciplinary Studio program in the Department of Art at UCLA and she is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Rhetoric with designated emphases in Film and Women, Gender, and Sexuality at UC Berkeley.
This exhibition was made possible with a residency from Green Papaya Art Projects and the support of the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and www.globalcommonsfoundation.org.
Divination exhibit runs until Jan 10, 2010
January 4, 2010
Divination: Brenda Fajardo Retells History
Exhibit runs until 10 January 2010
Lobby and West Wing Galleries
Fajardo, an artist, curator, cultural worker, educator, and Professor Emerita of the Department, is well known for her early works in prints and the tarot card-inspired paintings. She started her career in the performing arts where she was initiated to dance, body movement, and theater production. At present she is active in the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA). Line and movement stirred her fascination with the pictorial characteristics of prints. She trained under Manuel Rodriguez, Sr upon returning to the Philippines after studying abroad. Abstract lines juxtaposed with human figures typify her early prints like. In later years, she focused on her women and tarot card series to reference folk culture, local history, and the concerns of women within the social sphere. Fajardo is a pioneering woman artist in Philippine contemporary art and is highly regarded for her broad sympathies in the field of culture.
The exhibit runs until January 10, 2010. The Museum is open on Tuesdays to Sundays, 9 am to 4 pm.
For inquiries on acquisition of works, please contact:
Tin-aw Art Gallery
Upper ground floor, Somerset Olympia, Makati Avenue
+632 892 7522; info@tin-aw.com; datienza@tin-aw.com; dsalang@tin-aw.com
For inquiries on acquisition of loose works on paper, please contact:
Susie Garcia
+632 928 1927; (+63 927) 497 3528; garcia.jesusa@gmail.com.
New Directions in Art Studies
December 22, 2009
New Directions in Art Studies
The Second Art Studies conference aims to chart emergent directions in art writing, pedagogy, criticism and production of Philippine art. The latter is broadly conceived, from the visual and literary to the architectural and performative and on to the hypermediated. While the 2002 Art Studies conference reflected on discourses that have shaped writing on Philippine art, this conference maps out new disciplinal streams and modes of studying Philippine art. As such, it is seen as a platform of inquiry situating Philippine art studies in a critically interpretive and interrogative space. While the reflexive posture that the conference takes signals the act of looking back, it also intimates possibilities and directions, and aims to form coherent signposts and productive engagements for scholars, researchers and artists alike, in the future.
The conference explores the following themes:
Pedagogy
• Production of knowledge about Philippine art
• Systems sustaining dominant knowledge of Philippine art
• Art and the everyday – revisiting the links between art and life
• Spaces of pedagogy and spaces of critique
• Art practice as pedagogical possibility
• Tracing disciplinal orientations in art studies and humanities
• Curriculum building and textbook writing in the Humanities
Curatorial Practice
• Exhibitions as dialogical platforms
• Curatorial models that challenge the notion of an art ‘center’
• Curation and pedagogy
• Curation and aesthetic debates: Variant modes of art reception
• Collaborative curatorial practice
• Curation and the production of contemporary art history
• Curation, institutions, and art markets
Local Art Writing and Criticism
• Local art writing and their specific discourses
• Local criticism and regional, global resonances
• Knowledge production and local art writing in relation to the
question of aesthetics
• Modes of circulation and audience formation
• Is art history global?
• Theory of art in the Philippines
Disciplinal Intersections
• New studies in Philippine art and society
• Formation of disciplinal nodes and networks via
disciplinal intersections
• Mapping creative, multi-disciplinal modes of inquiry
and responses
• Interdisciplinal trajectories
• Methods in global art history or history of global art
• Art and social movements (class, gender, ecology,
ethnicity, spirituality)
Art historians, researchers, curators, artists and art administrators engaged in various art forms and whose works explore these themes and related issues are invited to send proposals for individual presentations. Proposals should include title and abstract of 250 words, contact details and institutional affiliation. Conference fee is P2, 500.00 and includes a copy of conference proceedings, light snacks and dinner. Early bird registration is P1, 800.00 until 15 December 2009.
Inquiries and registrations of interest thru artstudiesnewdirections@gmail.com or the following conference conveners:
Prof. Cecilia S. Dela Paz Prof. Patrick D. Flores, PhD Prof. Tessa Maria T. Guazon
Department of Art Studies, College of Arts and Letters Faculty Center Room 2092 University of the Philippines-Diliman 1101 Quezon City; (+632-9270581 / +632-9818500 local 2115)
IMPORTANT DATES
15 December 2009 Deadline for submission of proposals
30 December 2009 Notification for accepted proposals
30 December 2009 Deadline for conference registration
30 January 2010 Submission of full papers
