1st Mindanao Art Fair and Exhibit
Theme: Traversing the River of Creativity
Atrium of Gaisano Mall, Davao City
10 a.m. to 9 p.m, October 5 and 6, 2019
(Exhibit Notes from MindanaoArt)
The Gallery of the Peninsula and the Archipelago
Ateneo de Zamboanga University
CURATORIAL NOTES: Flujos (Flows)
Zamboanga’s geography as a peninsula has always been a core element of its cultural heritage. Although its shores and highways have attracted diverse customs that have influenced this port city, its iconography and motifs continue to remain similar and significant. Through the years, the city has anchored its identity on a handful of imagery unique to its on-going historiography.
In Flujos (Flows), The Gallery of the Peninsula and the Archipelago brings together Edwin Jumalon, Lorna Fernandez, and Kiko Miranda to explore a re-telling of these same motifs through personal narratives. The works tell like a graphic stream of consciousness. A consistent visual storyteller, Jumalon culls multiple scapes of his hometown. He fuses each image to the beat of three muses fanning vinta sails. Ever the experimental artist, Fernandez examines amor or love in her mixed media series. She brings to the wall notions of mother, child, origin, and reality and frames them with batik textile strips. A confident illustrator, Miranda’s geometric strokes invite the viewer to peek into the lives of the Badjao fisherfolk. His stylized designs bring to the fore the community’s symbiotic relationship with the sea.
These classic imagery depicting Zamboanga represent the creative currents flowing in Western Mindanao. There is no better way to digest the works than to see it in visual dialogue with other obras at the Mindanao Art Fair.
ARTISTS’ PROFILES
EDWIN JUMALON
Edwin Jumalon stands as a proud patriarch of a family of artists and is one of the forerunners of Zamboanga art.
His painting deals in shaping narratives through image recontextualization, not merely for linear recording of nature and experiences, although these elements- true to most artists- are the inspirations that inform his artmaking.
He puts down images randomly, permitting free rein to the imagination until a narrative comes to light. Eliciting divergent, nonrational messages to unfold in the process, his subject often takes place during the act of painting.
Jumalon juxtaposes imageries from memory, from photographs, drawings, or his old paintings- not of nostalgia, but of ‘spatial play’…building up the work and inventing the subject matter. He aims and regards every painting as ‘effect’ of a spontaneous excursion with perception. He wants it to evoke, rather than describe.
LORNA FERNANDEZ
Lorna Fernandez is a Zamboangueña artist known for her assemblages and collages involving found objects, industrial items, and recycled materials. She also works in the field of painting.
In the 1990s, Lorna emerged as a self-taught artist who displayed a passion for surreal self-portraits and paintings of flora. This developed into an exploration of the interplay between sexuality and domesticity and expanded her media to include constructivist sculptures, clay figures, cloth dolls, and wall-hung assemblages.
Her works have been featured in numerous exhibitions in Manila, Baguio, Davao, Gensan, Cagayan de Oro, Zamboanga, Venice, Hong Kong, and Bologna, among others.
KIKO MIRANDA
Kiko Miranda is a self-taught Zamboangueño visual artist who specializes in free form line art which reflects his deep fascination with ethnic textiles and patterns of cultural communities in Mindanao.
His work with cultural communities in Zamboanga Peninsula and the neighbouring BARMM island provinces has informed much of his images, themes, and visual motif.
Kiko’s works aim to celebrate his cultural identity as a Zamboangueño and a Mindanaoan. He believes in the virtues of compassion, harmony, and service which he hopes is reflected in his works. It is through his creativity that he channels these virtues and shares it to the world.
Aside from being a practicing visual artist, Kiko is also a creative youth development program specialist and has been very active in bringing the creative arts to underserved and vulnerable youth in the Philippines.
CURATOR’S BIO
JANINE MICHELLE CABATO
Ja Cabato currently manages the recently opened Chinatown Museum at Binondo.
Originally from Zamboanga, she studied Art Management at Ateneo de Manila University. Her curatorial stints in Mindanao include Silingan Seni Visual Arts Festival (2017) and Mindanao Art Best (2014).
As an artist, she has had a number of exhibits at the Gallery of the Peninsula and the Archipelago at Ateneo de Zamboanga University.