BUSAY, CEBU CITY — The energy swirling outside the TOPS ArtFest entrance was enough to make the bleary-eyed guests from Manila, who had arrived on an extremely delayed flight, perk up. The night’s nippy breeze was an added bonus to the walk-through at The Circle on the ground floor, where part of the art festival that brought 300 artists under one roof was held on Oct. 22-25.

Against Cebu City’s glittering skyline, TOPS ArtFest throbbed with vibrancy. It opened with “art cars” by artist Ronald Ventura, in which, using luxury cars as his canvases, he turned a McLaren into a tiger in striking hues of black and orange (its fanged face painted on the hood), and a Porsche into a landscape of cartoon figures (Richie Rich) and images of a white stallion and golden horse statue. While attendees posed near the art cars, a procession of living canvases, or the art parade, skirted the exhibit and walked to the view deck. The accompanying Lihok dancers were about to perform. Lihok (Cebuano for movement or action) is a dance theater known for merging contemporary dance movements, physical improvisation, and dramatic storytelling in its choreography.

It was TOPS ArtFest’s third year. This year’s theme, “Building and Breaking Norms,” urged attendees “to examine the ways in which artists engaged with structures, traditions, conventions, and assumptions that shape both art and society.” 

At TOPS 2024, attendees were encouraged to develop a relationship with art on their own terms and pace. The participating artists included Adeste Deguilmo, Charlie Co, Romulo Galicano et al. Deguilmo’s “Lamdag: Apotheosis of Cebu” was unveiled at the ribbon-cutting ceremony and followed by a poetic rendition of Lamdag’s story by the theater communications company 2TinCans. The 2025 festival, as announced in its theme, “Brushstrokes of Legacy: Honoring Traditions & Diversity,” honored brushstrokes, the cornerstone of “shared stories honoring traditions, embracing diversity, and welcoming every kind of creative voice.” A highlight was Deguilmo and Ariel Caratao’s “Live figure painting: Coffee wash and oil.”

For TOPS 2026, it was prudent to be selective in giving full rein to one’s interest (or curiosity)  considering the volume of the exhibited artworks as well as the performances and lectures scheduled each day. Pacing was pivotal to prevent sensory overload and to be able to focus on activities outside one’s routine.

Installation, helmets 

The Circle’s crowd made their way to the Activity Space on the third floor at 6:20 p.m. for the official opening that, first, unveiled Junyee’s installation “Wood Things” and, second, launched the ArTabang Auction’s silent bidding for decommissioned helmets of the Emergency Rescue Unit Foundation (ERUF). The foundation is Cebu’s nonprofit emergency medical and disaster response organization.

Junyee, considered the Filipino pioneer in installation art, was this year’s featured artist together with newly named National Artist Nune Alvarado. 

“Wood Things” (1981) was intriguing because of not only its magnitude and use of dried banana stalks and kapok pods but also the life-like creepy crawlies inching their way across the festival floor and wall. There was no way to unsee the mutant “bugs” because the lecture series’ orientation was towards them, until performance artist Bai Jaya reconfigured the space. He had the audience face the sunny blue sky during his indigenous sea chantey session on the last day.

The horrifying “bugs” were countered by ERUF helmets reimagined as art pieces for an auction. The helmets got everyone’s interest because of how artists made them distinctive. Art Association of the Philippines president Fidel Sarmiento’s “Kapos sa Pambalot” art helmet was wrapped with canvas and painted in his latest style and concept series Europa. Lida María Aguilar drew a sampaguita, eagle and flame on her helmet she named “Eternal Flame,” which signified her tribute to ERUF volunteers’ courage, vigilance and commitment. Stephanie Honrado transformed her art helmet into a metaphor for ERUF volunteers, whom she called angels “descending upon them in their moments of need, crisis, and seeming hopelessness.” She named it “Descent of Angels.” 

TOPS 2026 was dedicated to its former creative director Sonia dela Torre Yrastorza, who passed away six days before the opening, program director Sarah Henderson said in her introductory remarks. A wall at the Activity Space paid tribute to Yrastorza, who, as inscribed, “opened the doors of opportunity for so many who crossed her path” and whose favorite subjects were weathered houses and gardens, which she saw as “spaces spiritually reflective of the ins and outs of life and living.”

Art auction and competition 

ArTabang Auction, a TOPS trademark event, began with a silent auction of the ERUF helmets on opening night and culminated in a live auction on Oct. 24 at the Activity Space. The silent bidding for the sculptures and paintings was run on Oct. 24 on Google Meet and Viber. 

The auction’s first part was the helmet bidding that had a starting bid price of ₱100,000 and a minimum ₱5,000 increment. Auctioneer Jiggy Juice cajoled bidders to raise their red paddles and was successful in getting a winning bid of ₱155,000 for “Duality of the Mind” by Filipino designer Kenneth Cobonpue and visual artist-storyteller Thom Jopson. He also raised the hammer price for Deguilmo’s “Golden Harvest” and Sarmiento’s “Kapos sa Pambalot” to ₱120,000 each, and Aguila’s “Eternal Flame” to ₱110,000.

There were 17 sculptures and paintings on auction, according to Henderson. “Around five had [a winning bid of] ₱300, 000 each, while the remaining 12 were between ₱950, 000 and ₱3 million. The highest bids were for the paintings by Adeste Deguilmo and Demi Padua,” she said.

The auction proceeds were donated to Cebu’s “steadfast pillars of compassion and service”: Cristina Lee Dino Foundation Inc., Sacred Heart School for Boys batch ‘85, and ERUF.

Another TOPS ArtFest signature event is the Plein-Air Painting Competition, which took its name from the French phrase en plein air (“in the open air”).  “Perspective Play” was the concept for this year, and contestants in the student and professional categories interpreted the subject TOPS as landscape and inspiration. Per competition rules, students could work with oil or acrylic on canvas, pastel and watercolor, while the professionals were limited to oil and acrylic on canvas. Abstract and nonfigurative works, digital prints and mixed media were deemed ineligible entries. Prizes were ₱20,000 (first place), ₱15,000 (second), and ₱10,000 (third) for the student category, and ₱50,000, ₱40,000, and ₱10,000, respectively, for the professional category.

Assessment of the Plein-Air entries was done at the Honeycomb Hostel on Oct. 24. The judges were art journalist-critic Rachel Mayo and artists Fidel Sarmiento and Romulo Galicano for the students’ works, and artist-critic Cid Reyes and Adeste Deguilmo for the professionals’. (Curious, I asked Mayo how they selected the winners. She said it was one’s “critical eye” that made the decision.) 

Here are the winners in the first, second and third places: Marianne Guinto, Jolimar Delos Santos and Angelito “Jo” Florendo for the professionals, and Hennie Portugal, Maite Alessandra Zuluaga and Michael Luengas Jr. for the students.

Ancient writing 

I was interested in three workshops: “Badlit ug Pamatik,” “Sugbuanon (Cebuano) Indigenous Collective Jam,” and “Otohele: Sugbuanon Indigenous sea chant and rhythms,” which were all facilitated by Bai Jaya, a staunch advocate for indigenous people’s rights and a popular Cebuano radio personality. 

“Badlit ug Pamatik” (Lines and Marks) was relearning the indigenous way of script writing and mapping movements. Being from Luzon, I instinctively thought of baybayin, the precolonial writing system. I learned I was right, but not entirely, while sitting in Bai Jaya’s session with PAREF Springdale students, correcting baybayin to surat Bisaya, arguing in his sonorous voice that the former was a Tagalog writing system. He further explained that the way some of their classmates wrote their names on the flip board used Roman script, not Filipino. To prove his point, he presented a handout outlining surat Bisaya’s vowels (pantingog), consonants (katingog), and punctuation (panulbok). He said the curves and waves highlighted the relationship of the writing system with the way of life of ancient Filipinos, who were seafarers.

Catching up later with Bai Jaya on Messenger, I asked him to elaborate on why Filipinos need to be aware of the ancient practice of writing as a form of communication. “Our medium of communication has been and will always be storytelling yet we developed our writing system [to resemble] formal agreements [or] contracts,” he replied, pointing out that the ancient writing was preserved with the use of bamboo, copper plate, stone, etc.

He asserted that losing the heritage through over-assimilation meant completely “losing our stories that go with it, our way of life, which the script has through the curves (kurbada), lines (badlis) and emphasis (kudlits).”

“Our education system is one institution that critically matters on this heritage preservation,” he added.

Ancestral sounds

The Sugbuanon Indigenous Collective Jam moved from The Circle’s open space to the sheltered entrance when it rained on Oct. 23. The change in venue didn’t dampen the energy and enthusiasm of Bai Jaya and his Ka Tambol Sugbo drummers, who were joined by the Lihok dancers. (On Messenger, Bai Jaya said he formed Ka Tambol Sugbo in 2021 to bring back the rhythms and beat of the indigenous collective.)

At the collective jam, Bai Jaya explained that the traditional sounds came from the kalatong, the traditional drums, gongs, and strings, accompanying the extant dances and chants, which the colonizers documented when they “arrived at our island community.”

He lamented that people have forgotten “our authentic tradition that’s true to who we are and yields to our natural heritage and environment.” However, amid the modernized Filipino art, heritage, and music, he pointed out that the collective jam broke the walls of the colonial void — the cultural erasure, the loss of self-identity and heritage.

The collective jam, which drew from Austronesian oral traditions, was a prequel to Bai Jaya’s session on otohele on Oct. 24. Otohele is a precolonial Visayan term for the sailors and rowers’ sea chanteys. It was a tradition passed from father to son to keep the Visayan history and cultural values alive. Leading the otohele was a master singer (aka paraawit/parahele) rowing — a role Bai Jaya performed with infectious aplomb. He compared the otohele to Haka, the traditional dance and chant of the Māori, but said the Visayan version isn’t defensive because it was a way of documenting the community’s yells and cheers in times of victory and celebration.

Added Bai Jaya, a yoga mentor: “Otohele was and is the story of the success of our ancestors in braving the seas and mastering the natural forces. The gathering around it holds our story of victory and glory of our race. It’s our ancestral heritage [and] key to truly solving our current environmental and societal woes.”

Bai Jaya believes that bringing back otohele shouldn’t necessitate sacrifice, like that of the ancestral healers and elders in adopting and assimilating the foreign ways into their lives, i.e.,  yamyam to orasyon, anito into anting-anting, sangyaw into prayers.

He declared: “It’s time for remembering our lineage and ancestors.”

TOPS ArtFest had a lesson for everyone. Dilettantes perhaps saw an appreciation beyond mere aesthetics and became critical of the artists’ purpose. Also, they possibly developed a strong stirring to make art a lifelong commitment. On the flip side, professional artists confronted artists with differing perspectives. Meanwhile, those who have put away their brushes may have found their passion waking from slumber.

I left the four-day event still believing that art goes beyond aesthetics and is not as innocuous as others make it to be. Art speaks, questions, claims what was forcibly taken, and gives space to hope for better communities and lives. CS