December 10 – January 28, 2020
SFAD JCB Gallery
PWU School of Fine Arts and Design, Leon Guinto St, Malate, Manila, Philippines
“PWUersa”. A mind play on a school acronym. A convergence of energies. Force.
It is also an exhibit that brings together a diversity of visual art practices that locate its various beginnings within common realms: that of place, and of time.
Philippine Women’s University (PWU) places the encounters of art learning through class studios and exhibit spaces for the Fine Arts program; and also, through other present-day facilities of the School of Fine Arts and Design (SFAD) at the PWU Manila Campus. Place would also be about the very idea of conducting one’s education outside classroom walls, one associated with the bohemian leanings that PWU art students have been known for— such as hanging out to meet other artists, join competitions, or else be part of creative encounters out in the streets or within less-established institutions.
And time is not a convenient categorization, for this exhibit does not intend to reunite a particular class or batch. What these artists share is to live though particular cusps defined by the mid-1990s: of youth spent before the end of the second millennium; when computers and technology invited both fear and awe. They were kids growing up in the time of a fledgling democracy, barely a decade after the ouster of the Marcos dictatorship. What then are the forces that shaped the decisions and directions taken by these artists into the present?
Time now positions the gathering of PWUersa as part of the commemoration of PWU’s centennial year. Continuing the exploration of memory as critical discourse, the PWU SFAD JCB Gallery, propels the question by inviting this selection of artists to install works about the present and the past, laying the ground to examine visual trajectories and forces of tension within binaries of located points.
— an excerpt from the notes of Karen Ocampo Flores
*** HUMAN RIGHTS DAY***
Renato Barja, Mark Barretto, Jef Carnay, Vermont Coronel Jr., Racquel D.L.-Cruz, Carlo Gabuco, Caloy Gernale, Troy Ignacio, Ian Madrigal, Mitch Garcia, Christopher Zamora
