PHUKET, Thailand—Why do sex workers always figure in a scenography where they lean on the ledge of a balcony, their hair undulating in volume or in chaos, while smoking a cigarette? Does the smoke from the cigarette bear the air exchanged in the lip-locking kisses, the promises of romance, and the depths of intimacy, only...
Author: Jose Mari Cuartero (Jose Mari Cuartero)
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The eternal returns of the day
As we enter another year, another period emerges where we try to recollect the life we have lived and measure its worth. Precisely, in the passing of such a life, a part of ourselves fails to move on and ends up left in the past, and in the process of how such a past deserts...
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The continuing war under the glass ceiling
Whenever World War II serves as a reference point of a conversation, I imagine such a period through the sonic register of disorder, disruption, and explosion, a city turned into ground zero. From the archives, moving images, cinema, and literature, Manila figures into the frames as a place where the legacies of Spanish and American...
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The flow from Mount Banahaw to the Venice Biennale
The inactive volcano that is Mount Banahaw functions in our Philippine social life in different ways: a natural fortress against tropical cyclones from the Pacific, the dwelling place of mystical, and a protected forest reserve. This mountain solidifies its enchanting presence in the heart of the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with the exhibition Sa...
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Sea people and their buoyant ontology
Who are the sea people? What does it mean for people to embody the vastness of the sea? What happens when the sea’s massiveness measures up with the collectivity of the people? I view these questions as urgent with the return of Jon Cuyson to Vargas Museum of the University of the Philippines Diliman with Taong...
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Grayscale pessimism
If drawings lend themselves to the world as an artistic medium for one to experience discovery, an insight drawn from the radically hopeful imagination of John Berger, the drawings of the artist Lyra Garcellano in her just-concluded show at Finale Art File, titled Land, Labor, Life: Tracing ‘Progress’ in Selected Notes, expresses political despair, which,...
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When we melt together
Italian painter Viviana Riccelli, currently based in the magical island of Siquijor, ushers us into Galleria Duemila where her new abstract paintings, collectively titled “Chaos,” are being exhibited until April 13. The exhibition welcomes us with a diptych, The Beginning of a Journey, mixed media on carton board on paper in which the field of...
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Colliding scapes of happiness
What does hell mean in relation to heaven and the earth? Why do we visualize hell when our lives have been dominated by Christian values, believing that one’s life on earth must lead us to heaven? Does heaven continue to hold a profound meaning despite how life on earth has been mostly described as hell? ...