Portraits: curated by Gwen Bautista

Renz Baluyot, Jheane Borja, Julia Borja, Pin Calacal, Rose Cameron, Ronyel Compra, Cian Dayrit, Pepe Delfin, Jonas Eslao, Grace Impas, Jun Impas, Jay Jore, Adrian Labuguen, Amiel Louise Rivera, Carlos Valino, Eric Zamuco

The exhibition is the first installment in a series of curatorial projects determined to examine genres in art forms as peddled by the Western canon. An attempt to interrogate our contemporary subscription to or subversion of its limiting structure, the collection examines the evolution of image-making while confronting hierarchy and tradition. Here, we explore alternative approaches to representation through portraits created by artists across different generations. The ensemble begins with an untitled painting from the 70s by the late Carlos Valino (b. 1926 d. 2008), whose mastery in portraiture becomes evident in his depiction of a woman seated on a rattan chair-a succinct but tender portrayal of everyday life in this side of the world. The rest of the works in the exhibition either follow through or completely disengage from the practice of figuration in realizing the genre.

In his 1998 essay, American critic John Yau highlights the monocultural lens that pervades the art world by criticizing the installation of a painting by the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam near the coatroom at MoMA, rather than having it displayed alongside his European and American counterparts in the institution's main gallery. He writes, "For Lam to have achieved the status of unique individual, he would have had to successfully adapt to the conditions of imprisonment (the aesthetic standards of a fixed tradition) ...both construct and watch over. To enter this prison, which takes the alluring form of museums, art history textbooks, galleries, and magazines, an individual must suppress his cultural differences and become a colorless ghost."¹ Yau sees this nuisance as an act of denying the possibility of inclusion in the conversation of a diverse art history and civilization. Hence, Portraits, 2025 is an exercise in participation, adaptation, and critique to these conditions.

words by Gwen Bautista

¹Yau, J. (2023). Please Wait by the Coatroom: Reconsidering Race and Identity in American Art. Black Sparrow Press.