Filipino artist Daniel Coquilla is most inspired when chronicling culture from the top, as if overseeing events and nuances as they happen. Top Shot captures such details, showing the deep influence of Chinese settlers on Philippine shores. While the Chinese New Year is not officially marked as a holiday in the country, the Filipino-Chinese community carries on the tradition of holding dragon dances to attract good luck. Coquilla, a video editor at the National Institute for Science and Mathematics Education Development of the University of the Philippines, paints these scenes in great detail, letting the viewer in on as many highlights and sidelights in the composition. There are food stalls selling noodles (pancit) and bean-filled pastry (hopia) which people would travel all the way to Chinatown for, and also a glimpse of dragon boat races. Then Coquilla mixes it up with other Filipino traditions, including celebrations and parties held to welcome the Western New Year. The top view perspective allows viewers to see the larger picture, showing joy in people's faces on one hand, and longing on the other.
About the artist:
Daniel “Dansoy” Coquilla (born 1970, Panabo City, Davao del Norte) majored in painting at the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts, where he also received the UP Gawad Chanselor para sa Sining Biswal in 1998. He garnered two Juror’s Choice awards in the 1997 Philip Morris Philippine and ASEAN Art Awards, and has also been Grand Prize and Juror’s Choice winner in AAP Competitions, as well as a finalist in the Metrobank and Shell National Painting Competitions. He was likewise a Philippine Finalist to the Windsor & Newton World-Wide Millenium Painting Competition. In 2006, he was made a Thirteen Artists Awardee by the Cultural Centre of the Philippines. Top Shot is his eighteenth solo exhibition and second in Singapore.
