Category Archive for: arts and culture

kultura

Art Upstaged: The National Gallery Singapore opens

A media trip to Singapore for any of its arts and culture events – from the Art Biennale to the Writers’ Fest – is always welcome respite from the daily grind of writing. Usually, one is given the time to go through the smaller art galleries and the bigger museums, and one is given the opportunity to see the various cultural projects of both the government and the private sector, over and above what one is invited into the country for.

I’ve always thought that this was what made these visits a great thing: in the past, organizers of media trips know exactly how much time writers need to see the art, and then how much more time they might need to go around and get a feel of what else is going on – the better to contextualize whatever it is we are being flown in for.

The moment I saw the National Gallery Singapore (NGS), I realized there was no way any art critic would be able to do a credible review of it with the three whole days we were being given. And then I saw the fixed and tight itinerary of activities and I knew this would be far from being a relaxing trip to SG. (more…)

kultura

Ai Weiwei, beyond Western claims

Though it was apt to kick-off a year with the promise of writing more about art, and hopefully more about art outside of this country (haha!), with the first Ai Weiwei exhibit in China, something that I happened upon when I was there in September, and rebelling against the very fixed and strict schedule set for the media group I was with. So I got in a cab and asked in my Chinese-English (which is really just English with a hopefully successful Chinese accent, haha), to be brought to 798 Art District, 30 minutes away without traffic, a wonderful wonderful space for art and creativity, and art selling, inevitably.

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kultura

Blaspheming against the bul-ol

There is no looking at Ronald Ventura’s work without having in the back of my head that $1.1M dollar record-breaking sale at the 2011 Sotheby’s auction. In 2012 it seems he’s also had a good run at art auctions such as the Christie’s auction in Hong Kong last last year, which shouldn’t be a surprise really. Between the interest in Southeast Asian art and 2011’s record-breaking sale, it would seem strange if Ventura were not to ride that wave.

It is a wave of course that might not go in the direction of home, at least as far as putting together an exhibit is concerned, and this might have been why “Watching the Watchmen” (at the Vargas Museum in December) ultimately interested me: why would you exhibit at home at this point? What for? Underappreciated as the arts are, no matter how critically and globally acclaimed, why care at all to engage with this nation on the level of one’s artmaking? In the same breath, what would nation get out of something it refuses to acknowledge as important?

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kultura

15 from 2015: kultura

I wasn’t very good at doing arts and culture in the country the past year. But here’s a list of the strange, the good, the surprising in culture for 2015, not at all a best or worst list because … see the first sentence.

First a critical aside: having worked as dramaturg for Kleptomaniacs and a bit with Tanghalang Pilipino in 2014 meant keeping the theater reviews to a minimum in 2015. I needed that time to let go of the little inside stories that I know, if not to forget the petty tsismis. Distance is a good thing, and one is glad when it is given.

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kultura

Cultural crisis #APEC2015

On November 18, Malacañang issued a non-apology to the public who had been inconvenienced during APEC 2015.

A non-apology worded as a thank you “for your patience and understanding over the inconvenience brought about by our enhanced security measures.” And then it spun the difficulty of the commute to work, the fact of absences and tardiness that will mean less wages, and said: “You have shown to the 10,000 delegates what Filipino hospitality means.”

If it’s to sacrifice our time, energy, earnings the past week – well, we were forced into that kind of hospitality. If it’s Manila streets emptied of people and vehicles, shops closed, turned into ghost towns – that does not speak of the Manila we know at all.

If it’s the display of culture as revealed by the final APEC Dinner Performance for Leaders – then please lang. Not in our name.

Because that was a monstrous failure, an ill-conceptualized variety show, that was far from displaying “the best” of Philippine culture. (more…)