GREEN GO HOME

Green Go Home
Tomas Vu and Rirkrit Tiravanija
with Buen Abrigo, Mike Adrao, Renz Lee, Gabby Nazareno,
Archie Oclos, Iggy Rodriguez, and Jo Tanierla

13 Oct–18 Nov 2017 at the 1F Galleries | Opening reception on 13 Oct (Friday) at 4pm

Described as “social sculpture,” the project dwells on, magnifies, and renders the gesture of protest looming, urgent, and lively in current time and present political life. Conceived by collaborators Tomas Vu and Rirkrit Tiravanija, it has been organized in Colombia, the United States, and Spain. It consists of found images on newsprint which are pasted directly onto the walls of the site and interacting with graffiti text with which it shares pictorial space. Inflected by the charged term “gringo” that reels off the title when it is read, the exhibition evokes the history of foreign interventions and the resistances against them worldwide. According to Vu and Tiravanija, “the provocation inherent in Green Go Home is positioned against the subtle underlying subtext of U.S. interventions, and colonialist attitudes, towards its neighbors in Latin American from Mexico southwards: an antagonism that has cost many lives and much strife. In the imagery itself, the presence of each character-from films to music to personalities of resistance-reveals itself to the viewer as addressing the condition of the graffiti text. The grid holds up the statement and reinforces the layers of interpretation, readings, and misunderstandings. Green Go Homeis meant to be a wall of resisters, and of resistance.”

This year, Green Go Home goes to UP Vargas Museum. Through collaborations with contemporary Filipino artists, images of recent protest actions in the Philippines will be drawn on the walls of the Vargas as the exhibition progresses. The exhibit seeks to review our notions of history by contributing to a specific history of protest through interactions with the audience. The Vargas develops a timeline of protests to be accompanied by discussions as an integral part of the exhibition.

Green Go Home runs until 18 November.

Tomas Vu received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas, El Paso, and received his Master’s in Fine Arts from Yale University. He has been a professor at Columbia University School of the Arts since 1996. He helped found the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies. In 2000, he was appointed the LeRoy Neiman Professor of Visual Arts. Since its inception, he has served as Director/Artistic Director of the Neiman Center. Vu had one-person museum exhibitions in Japan, Italy, China, and Vietnam. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship award in 2001; and recently, the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in 2015, the Audience Award for Best Artist and residency at the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts Ljubljana in 2016, and the 2018 Arts/Industry Residency at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Vu currently lives and works in New York City.

Rirkrit Tiravanija studied at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto (1980–84), Banff Center School of Fine Arts (1984), School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1984–86), and Whitney Independent Studies Program in New York (1985–86). Tiravanija’s works have been included in biennales such as Venice Biennale (1993 and 1999), Whitney Biennial (1995 and 2005), Liverpool Biennial (2002 and 2004), and São Paulo Biennial (2006). For the Venice Biennale in 2003, the artist co-curated Utopia Station, an exhibition that later showed in Haus der Kunst in Munich. Tiravanija’s works have been recognized with numerous awards and grants including a Gordon Matta Clark Foundation Award, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Competition Award (1993), National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship (1994), the Lucelia Artist Award from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2003), and the Hugo Boss Prize from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2004). He lives and works in New York, Berlin, and Chiang Mai.

Buen Abrigo received training in painting from the University of the Philippines’ College of Fine Arts. He was one of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists grantees in 2015, and was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards in 2016. A decade earlier, he won recognitions for his entries to the Shell National Students Arts Competition, Metrobank Art and Design Excellence (MADE) Awards, and PLDT-DPC Annual Visual Arts Competitions. He had participated in numerous group exhibitions, to name some: Placard: Signs of the Times and Nothing to Declare both presented at the Vargas in 2011, Bonifacio150 at the UP Fine Arts’ Corredor Gallery, and Continuum at Ayala Museum’s ArtistSpace.

Mike Adrao has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of the Philippines. He was one of the co-founders of Surrounded by Water, an artist-run space in Manila in the late nineties and early 2000. He has participated in two residency programs: one for Project Space Pilipinas (Mandaluyong), and one for NEAR Dangsang (Seoul). He was part of exhibitions in numerous museums and gallery spaces in the Philippines (including the gallery at National Commission for Culture and the Arts in 1996) and abroad (Malaysia in 2008 and Singapore in 2014).

Renz Lee received his Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting from the University of the Philippines (2016). He is a member of Artists’ Circle Fraternity and Tambisan sa Sining, the cultural wing of the national labor group, Kilusang Mayo Uno. He received a scholarship from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2015 – 2016) and was part of the open studio Mutual Unknown held at the Galeri Nasional Indonesia in 2017. He has exhibited his works in different museums and galleries here and abroad (Singapore and France).

Gabby Nazareno received her Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication from the University of the Philippines – Cebu (2011) and Bachelor of Fine Arts, Studio Painting from the University of the Philippines, Diliman (2017). She was a recipient of the President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo Award for Outstanding Achievement in Culture and Arts in 2007. She was a Finalist of the 48th Shell National Students Art Competition (Oil/Acrylic Category) in 2015, and a Semi-finalist of the Metrobank Art and Design Excellence Award (2016). She also received the Dominador Castañeda Award for Outstanding Thesis for 2017 of the Department of Studio Arts, College of Fine Arts, in UP Diliman. She has been actively exhibiting her works since 2012 all over the country and she is currently teaching Art at Lingo Loco Academy.

Archie Oclos obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting from the University of the Philippines. He was awarded 2nd Place for the National Painting Competition of Vision Petron and Maningning Miclat Art Awards in 2011. In 2013, he was the recipient of the Grand Prize for the National Painting Competition of the Art Association of the Philippines Annual Competition. He received the Grand Prize for Sketchfest 5 of Manila Bulletin. He has been exhibiting his works in various galleries and artist run spaces in Manila and is known for his public murals.

Iggy Rodriguez studied the arts as an Advertising student at University of Santo Tomas College of Architecture and Fine Arts. He received the Grand Prize for the Pen and Ink Drawing Category of the Art Association of the Philippines Annual Competition (2001) and an honorable mention for the same category of the same award in 2003. He was also a grantee of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists (2009). He has been part of four residency programs: Big Sky Mind Artist Residency (Philippines, 2004-2005), Sambalikhaan Artist Village (Philippines, 2005-2011), Residency and Exchange Artist Program (REAP) (Singapore, 2008), and South East Asia Art Group Exchange (SAGE) Program (Malaysia, 2011). He is also a political activist, and is part of UGATLahi Artist Collective, an organization dedicated to producing people’s art and cultivating a pro-people’s culture.

Jo Tanierla received his Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting from the University of the Philippines (2014). He won First Place in the Watercolor Category of the SHELL National Students Award Competition in 2009. He was the National Finalist of the Painting Recognition Program of the Metrobank Art and Design Excellence in 2017. He collaborated with Umeda Tetsuya as his assistant for Sensorium: Media/Art Kitchen. He did different illustrations for the films of Mike Esteves: Ang Halaga ng Pangalan and Iris in 2015 and Link in 2017. He also illustrated and wrote for the publications Land and Neighborhood and Dilubyo in 2016 and Transit: An Online Journal. He has exhibited in various museums and galleries in the Philippines, including the National Commission for Culture and the Arts Gallery and the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

For more information, please contact Vargas Museum at (+632) 981-8500 loc. 4024 (UP trunkline), (+632) 928-1925 (fax) or send an email to vargasmuseum@gmail.com. You may also check our website at http://vargasmuseum.upd.edu.ph, Facebook via https://fb.me/vargasmuseum.upd and Twitter via @UPVargasMuseum for updates.