MORE MEANING IN VIRTUAL ART EXHIBITIONS
The impulse of the art community to gather people in exhibitions to explore art has drastically changed into virtual ones. Starting the quarantine with static web exhibitions, Metropolitan Museum of Manila (MET) transfigured virtual museum tours with intricate curation of Patrick Flores.
Rica Estrada from Alliance of Greater Manila Area Museums (AGMAM) shared that at this point when virtual exhibitions thrive, they “started the articulation of more meaningful conversations with the visitors.”
Importance of curation
While usual museum visits give liberty to spectators about which galleries to explore, curation plays a huge role in immersing oneself in art forms.
For Flores, “Curation is an exploration of knowledge systems balancing theory and practice.” Understanding the environment where the works were sourced begins one’s discernment of it.
He applied this by introducing Arte Povera — an Italian landscape exhibition by relating the colonial mentality embedded in Filipinos. The reflex is European art is superior to Philippine art because the former is international while the latter is local.
“If one were to sustain this default notion, one would inevitably support the structural prejudice against Philippine art and in the same breath, the privileged status of European art,” he said.
He went on and discussed that every exhibition differs from each other despite having the same themes in it because of the non-alignment of histories of places.
Filipino exploration of art materials
Putting premium on how much Filipino artists can offer in the industry, Mark Salvatus and Yason Banal explained different materials they use in their artworks.
Born and raised in Lucban, Salvatus shared that combining different items to form art has been ingrained in him through exposure to Pahiyas. Right now, the intermedia artist is shedding light on intermedia and street art using diverse materials.
His C_rafts installation in MET shows the urban culture and mundane encounters of Filipinos by combining everyday objects such as chairs and water jugs at home. Fusing these normal items has transformed into complex narratives of survival in times of crisis.
Meanwhile, Banal masters video and photography overlapping as his art materials. In his With Pleasure / No Tears (A Knife and a slice of Plutocrat
Life) installation, he showed the dependence of contemporary aesthetic to power which neglects the aesthetics of poverty emancipating social rights.
Rica Estrada from Alliance of Greater Manila Area Museums shared that at this point when virtual exhibitions thrive, they started the articulation of more meaningful conversations with the visitors.
Spectators who wish to learn more about these works can visit metmuseum. ph for in-depth curations by the country’s finest artists and curators. Look beyond the pleasant appearances of art and know its meaningful stories.