Profile: Martha Atienza (b.

1981) in Manila, Philippines to a Dutch mother and Filipino father, has moved
between both countries and cultures throughout her life. Currently she resides both in the Netherlands
and the Philippines, dependent on where her projects bring her.

Martha Atienza’s artistic practice navigates a time and space of her family of seafarers where (her
grandfather was a lighthouse watcher in the Visayan Sea of the Philippines, her father sea cptain, and
her Dutch mother who worked for the Holland America Line) both lands and seas from where they come
carry a story of historical migration, cultural identity, and now, current social and political state of affairs
in the Philippines.

Famous artwork: In a little over a decade, Martha Atienza has produced a body of work that not only
reveals the expanse of her artistic process but also strikes a chord of sentiment from her audience. From
boarding ships since 2010, her video installations of cargo vessels and fishing boats in the Philippines
and riverboats in the Netherlands (Endless Hours at Sea, 2014); from the Mississippi River passing
between Florida and Cuba, towards the coast of the US to Newfoundland (Newfoundland N
47°9’35.424” W 49°55’18.75”, 2015), are meditative. Her continuous single frame long-series videos of
oceans, hypnotic reminders of the power of the elements, transfix. An on-going documentation of the
annual island Ati-atihan festival by Atienza, has produced Anito 1 (2011-2015) and Anito 2 (2017), a
traditional celebration that slowly turns carnivalesque. From the Anito series was borne Our Islands
11°16’58.4 N 123°45’07.0 E (2017) a subaquatic religious procession passing by as if in an aquarium:
Christ carrying the cross, men in women’s clothes and demonstrators carrying tableaux with political
slogans, threatened from behind by menacing, armed henchman. Through her cast of characters and
choice of setting, Atienza presents a both critical and humorous take not only on the state of society in
the Philippines but also on the threat of climate change to which the country is increasingly exposed
through the warming of the world’s oceans.

Art technique:

As an artist, Martha Atienza is in a unique position of being a conceptual, contemporary thinker and
maker who overtly concerns herself with social questions, addressing and investigating these issues
directly with her art.

Born in Manila, The Philippines to a Dutch mother and Filipino father, Atienza has moved between both
countries and cultures throughout her life. Currently she resides both in the Netherlands and the
Philippines, dependent on where her projects bring her.
In 2006, Martha received her Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Academy of Visual Arts and Design in the
Netherlands. She also participated at the art programme at the Kuvataideakatemia in Helsinki, Finland,
in 2005. Previously she exhibited video art, often described as snapshots of reality, as part of
installations at galleries. Her works have been exhibited internationally at various art spaces, galleries
and video festivals. In 2009, she joined a residency in Green Papaya Project space in the Philippines. She
recently was awarded the Ateneo Arts Award with studio Residency Grants in Liverpool, Melbourne,
New York and Singapore.

Atienza’s video installations are visions culled from her Filipino and Dutch side. The precept of ‘stranger’
emanates as crevice between the operations of understanding and imagining. Her work is a series
mostly constructed in video, of almost sociological nature that studies her direct environment.

Atienza concocts her observations into fictions framed by gallery devices. She does not spare herself
from this presentation of anomalies. Tempting as it is to construe identity within the operation of the
gaze. Atienza hardly gives us this power. She is still the employer of this gaze, even when the view is
centered on her own image. It remains a curious sensation: to stand as voyeur to another person’s
voyeurism.

Currently, she is investigating the usage of contemporary art as a tool for effecting social change and
development.

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Profile

On February 21, 1853, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, one of the greatest Filipino painters along with fellow
painter Juan Luna in the 19th century, was born in Binondo, Manila. Hidalgo played a significant role in
Philippine history for having been an acquaintance and inspiration for members of the Philippine reform
movement which included Dr. Jose Rizal, Marcelo del Pilar, Mariano Ponce and Graciano López Jaena.
He studied Fine Arts and was subsequently sent to Spain in 1879 as a "pensionado" and enrolled in the
School of Fine Arts in Madrid. Instead of returning to the country after his studies, Hidalgo went to Paris
and put up a gallery, which became one of the centers of Filipino activities, where Filipino exiles and
revolutionaries found a sanctuary. He died on March 13, 1913 at the age of 60 in Sarrea, near Barcelona,
Spain. His remains were brought back to Manila and entombed in the Hidalgo family mausoleum at the
Cementerio del Norte (North Cemetery).

Artwork

One of the highlights of his career was his winning the silver medal in the 1884 Madrid Exposition of Fine
Arts, along with the gold win of painter Juan Luna, whom members of the Philippine reform movement
celebrated, with Rizal toasting to the two painters' good health and citing their awards as evidence that
Filipinos and Spaniards were equals. In his lifetime, Hidalgo produced over a thousand works which
include oil paintings, water color, pastels and charcoal drawings, with subjects ranging from the
mythological and historical to landscapes, seascapes, portraits and figures of the genre. Eventually he
became a great prize winner, including his paintings exhibited at the French Academy and marked H.C.
(Hors Concours). He received a gold medal for his overall participation at the Universal Exposition in St.
Louis, Missouri in 1904. His "El Violinista" was individually accorded a gold medal. The canvases he
executed for the Spanish colonial government in return for his study grant include: Governor Luis Perez
Dasmarinas and his Dominican Advisor, Guerreros Filipinos Velando la Tumba de su Jefe (Filipino
Warriors Guarding the Tomb of their Chief), 1890, and The Defeat of Limahong, 1892. His Greek
Philosopher at Work, 1889, La Enferma (The Invalid), 1900, and Per Pacem et Libertatem (Through Peace
and Liberty), 1904, all life-sized pieces, used to hang in the National Museum which was then called
National Gallery of Art in Manila. His major and controversial mural is the Assassination of Governor
Fernando Manuel de Bustamente, which shows friars murdering the governor.

Painting style: impressionism

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Profile

Geraldine Javier was born in Manila, Philippines in 1970, and soon discovered and distinguished her
artistic potential in an art school. Although her talent quickly made itself evident, Javier has held many
solo and group exhibitions in her home country since 1995. She was selected one of 13 top artists by the
Cultural Center of the Philippines, and she is recognized as one of the most celebrated Southeast Asian
artist both in the academic world and in the art field.

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Art technique and famous artwork

Geraldine Javier belongs to a new generation of young Filipino artists whose interests are variegated and
extensive, and who, unlike their social-realist predecessors, are engaged in pursuing the personal and
the idiosyncratic.

Javiers’s works are charged with tension and provocation, combining cool, calculated sophistication with
raw urban grit. Images of death, misery, dysfunctional relationships, and emotional violence are
recurrent themes. Her world thrives on complex, viscous thoughts and intimations, silent tensions and
implosions.

At first sight, the specific work on show carries strong reference to a sacred altar-piece. While Javier‘s
interest in religious iconography is connected to her own biography, having lived and struggled with the
catholic culture in the

Philippines, her work is devoid of any affiliation with a particular religion. It rather aims at
communicating universal, collective values.

“I had a primary and secondary Catholic education. The nuns taught us of the sacrifices of Jesus and the
other martyrs and from this I can deduce that the catholic religion‘s foundation was built on blood and
guilt as a consequence. The same guilt that the church exploits as it continues to exert an almost
authoritarian influence on Philippine society and our government to the point of paralysis in terms of
decision and policy making“. (Geraldine Javier, 2011).

Since 2004, Geraldine has been exhibiting her work internationally. Her solo exhibitions include"
Curiosities" at the Vargas Museum, U.P. Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines (2013), "Playing God in an Art
Lab" at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore (2012), "Museum of Many Things" at the Valentine
Willie Fine Art, Singapore (2011), "In The Beginning..." at Arario Gallery, Korea (2011), "Samploc Cave
Paintings" at the Finale Art Gallery, Philippines (2008), "Living Images, Leaden Lives" at the West Gallery,
Art Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City, Manila, Philippines (2008), "Girls Will Not Be Girls, Art
Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City, Manila, Philippines (2006) and Weight of Light, Finale Gallery,
Lao Center, Makati, Manila, Philippines (2005).

In 2009 Javier participated at the Prague Biennale, Prague, Czech Republic (2009). In 2003 she was
awarded with the Thirteen Artists Award, issued by the Cultural Centre of the Philippines (CCP), Manila.
Today, she is recognized as a leading figure in contemporary Filipino art both on a local and international
level.

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Profile

Roberto “Bobby” Chabet is widely acknowledged as the father of Philippine conceptual art. He was born
29 March, 1937.In 2011, there was a yearlong series on his work, Roberto Chabet: Fifty Years, curated by
the Ateneo Art Gallery in Manila in partnership with a number of important galleries across Southeast
Asia, including Osage in Hong Kong and ICA in Singapore. He died 30 April 2013.

He was a teacher and a mentor as well as an artist and sculptor in his own right, and his conceptual art
installations in the 60s and 70s were considered as renegade works. He was born as Roberto Rodriguez
but used Chabet, his mother’s maiden name, when he started to make art. At the time, he explained this
by saying that he didn’t want to be confused with the artist Manuel Rodriguez Sr., who was already
established but had no relation to Roberto.

He graduated with a degree in Architecture from the University of Santa Tomas in 1961 and had his first
exhibition at the Luz Gallery that same year. He was the founding museum director of the Cultural
Center of the Philippines and served as curator thee from 1967-70. He also initiated the first 12 Artists
Awards, giving recognition to young artists who were working in new ways, turning away from
traditional modes of art-making. He organised landmark exhibitions featuring work by young artist
throughout his career.

He led the 1970s conceptual art group called Shop 6 and taught for over 30 years at the UP College of
Fine Arts, where he espoused an art practice that gave precedence to idea over form. Chabet described
his pieces as "creatures of memory" and himself as their "custodian." His works are the result of a
process of unraveling of fixed notions about art and meaning. Highly allegorical, his drawings, collages,
sculptures and installations question modernity.

Famous artwork and artstyle

Namely Landscape with white moon, green window, white table. His works are meditations on space,
the transitory nature of commonplace objects and the collisions that occur with their displacement.
Prolific and multifaceted, Chabet ventured into architecture, painting, printmaking, sculpture, stage
designing, teaching, photography and writing.

Often perceived as too upfront and candid, Chabet readily spoke his mind out and showed a disdain for
false accolades and the conventions dictated by players in the art world. If anything, he was
uncompromising in his quest for creation and his search for the sublime, which he readily found in
commonplace objects.

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