Salamin

Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 5 PM – 10 PM

Kwago Book Bar
Warehouse 8-A, La fuerza plaza, 2241 Chino Roces Ave., 1231 Makati

As a response to Ani Rosa Almario’s curated shelf at Kwago book bar, we invited a dancer, sound artist, and four visual artists for a performance and exhibit on August 25 at Kwago book bar. We chose to focus on one book in particular found in the collection: “Mirror” by Suzy Lee. In this wordless children’s book, we see a girl interact with a mirror and her reflection in it. Seeing her reflection in the mirror takes the protagonist on a psychological and emotional roller coaster: self-awareness, loneliness, joy, ecstasy, confusion and anger. She ends up breaking the mirror into tiny little pieces in the end. The journey to self-knowledge and realization is painful. It’s filled with solitude, delusion and self-doubt. Who am I? Who will I become? Who should I become? Am I predetermined? Am I an illusion? A simulation, a copy of an original? Change is inevitable, what choices do I have? Do I have the choice to subvert and say ‘no’? This book is definitely for both kids and adults.

– Czyka Tumaliuan & Roy Voragen

PROGRAM:

5pm: exhibit opening
630pm – 8pm: performances
8pm – 10pm: socials

ARTISTS:

Issay Rodriguez
Jem Magbanua
Dani Nikki Valenzuela
Ralph Eya

PERFORMANCES:

Sasa Cabalquinto
Erick Calilan

Unlimited ice cream if you sign up here before Aug 25: http://bit.ly/rsvpsalamin

event page: http://bit.ly/salaminnimalas

door charge: PAY WHAT YOU WANT

(posters and design by: Alyssa De Asis)

#isipkwago #acuratedshelf #salamin #inbetweencommas

Invite
https://www.facebook.com/events/514403989307052/

Discover a new way of reading a children’s book at Salamin exhibit

Profiles

Dani Nikki Valenzuela, also known as Nikki Ocean, is a painter from Cavite, Philippines. She regards an exhibition space as a medium in itself, developing works that are always in dialogue with it and the viewer moving within it. Her artistic practice is a gentle meditation on metaphysics, existentialism, and pop culture as it is connected to her own journey to self-realization and personal spirituality. Her imagery examines and stretches the possibilities of paint to reveal the subconscious and ethereal.

She graduated cum laude with a bachelor degree in Fine Arts (Major in Painting) from the University of the Philippines in 2011. She started participating in various group exhibitions the following year, including the second Manila Art leg in 2010 and the group show, Olfactory Pussy Presents Fishnet Strangling She-Male Acupuncture Bitchfest or the Y2K Babes, at Finale Art File in May 2012. She held her first solo exhibition, a series of paintings in acrylic on wood and paper entitled Wet on Wet: the Cusp Before the Beach House, at Finale Art File’s Video Room in June 2013 and has since joined the gallery’s roster of artists.

Erick Calilan is a sound artist and hardware hacker whose works mainly focus on the illogical use of consumer-based electronic devices and reverse-engineering of technology.

Issay Rodriguez‘ body of work connects fragments of memories, places and identities that allow her to reflect on the everyday. Currently, her focus is research-oriented and community-based approaches using digital media, specifically virtual reality. Issay obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of the Philippines, Diliman, and got awarded the Outstanding Thesis Award and Gawad Tanglaw upon graduation in 2013. She has showed work in the main exhibitionViva Arte Viva at the Central Pavillion of the 57th Venice Biennale and studied as an exchange scholar at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. As an extension of her practice, Issay co-founded CC, a collaborative art initiative with visual artist Anjo Bolarda.

Maxine Syjuco is a visual artist, vocalist, and poet. She is known for her experimental mixed-media assemblages focusing on distorted realities, her poetry book A Secret Life, and her role in the Art-Rock band Jack of None. Her work has been featured in the Visayas Art Biennales, the 26th Asian International Art Exhibition in the Hangaram Museum of Korea, the Annual Tokiwa Museum of Japan Exhibition, the Art Takes Miami Exhibition in the U.S.A. Her works can be found Central Bank of the Philippines, the Tokiwa Museum of Japan, and the Magnum Arts Collection of London.

Ralph Eya is an independent artist concentrating on public art with community-based collaboration and alternative education. He seeks to contribute in activating individuals and the youth via artistic approaches in rights-based identity and critical consciousness formation, cultivating people’s right to freely be involved in the cultural life through participatory and accessible means of creative production.

He is included in the pioneer batch of Artists for a Better World of the Arts for Good Fellowship of Singapore International Foundation, a recipient of the Urban Planning and Social Impact Initiative Prize of Megacities Organization in Paris, and part of the changemakers roster of Young Cultural Innovators by the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria. He also works as a professional college lecturer for Multimedia Art Production in the Philippines.

Jem Magbanua‘s works is grounded firmly in the practice of drawing, exploring the nature of place and beings situated in them, whether organically or artificially. In her drawings, she illustrates landscapes that lie between the mental and the physical, converging with the realm of intangible memories. Jem earned her degree in Fine Arts from the LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore, First Class. Her work has been exhibited in various solo and group exhibitions in the Philippines, the United States, Japan, and Singapore.