After the Storm: Five artists from the Philippines is a group exhibition curated by Tony Godfrey featuring Christina Quisumbing Ramilo, Elaine Roberto Navas, Jill Paz, Juan Alcazaren, and Leslie de Chavez.
The title of this exhibition, chosen by curator Tony Godfrey back in April, has proved to be unduly optimistic: the storm, that is to say the pandemic, has never blown stronger in the Philippines than now. By August, Manila had gone back into lockdown. The Delta variant spreads inexorably. The hospitals are overflowing, the medical staff exhausted and disillusioned. Despite almost everyone wearing masks in public, plus face-shields in shops and enclosed spaces, the scarcity of vaccines has left the population vulnerable. With the developing nations hogging the vaccines, barely twenty percent of adult Filipinos have managed to get vaccinated.
This isn’t however an exhibition about Covid-19, but about how artists survived, and are surviving the pandemic. In April, the curator asked the five artists in this exhibition these questions: “What work will we make now for after the pandemic? Has the pandemic just meant a nice quiet time in the studio or some angst? Will we just carry on as we did before, or is there some change that the events of the last year and the current situation will make us take?”.
Their unspoken response was to make new work for this exhibition. The artists have never stopped working: some found that they could spend longer in the studio, as suddenly there were no distractions or social obligations they had to attend to. Others could not get to their studio and had to work in their kitchen. Not surprisingly all but one of the artists have included drawings or paper works in this show. Perhaps, above all, work made during the pandemic is marked by intimacy and thoughtfulness.
Venue: Mizuma Gallery, 22 Lock Road, #01-34 Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108939
Gallery Hours: Tue-Sat: 11am-7pm, Sun: 11am-6pm, Closed on Mon & PHs
When: 16 Oct - 14 Nov 2021,
By: Mizuma Gallery
