PRESS RELEASE
Sept 9 – 30, 2020,
Online Screenings & Discussions
General Public

Highlighting the difference offered by recorded documentation and oral history in the appreciation of performance art and moving image, MCAD Platforms presents the works of artists Lena Cobangbang, Katya Guerrero and Jean Marie Syjuco, along with discussions on the artists and their works. Curated and moderated by Merv Espina and Shireen Seno of Green Papaya and Los Otros respectively, as part of their program Light Leaks, the screenings and discussions seek  to enhance understanding of Philippine artists’ experiments with the moving image.

Sept 9-15     Screening: Lena Cobangbang
Watch the screening here.

Sept 12     Discussion: Lena Cobangbang & Eileen Legaspi Ramirez*

The first part of the program features eight works by artist Lena Cobangbang from 1997-2002, to be streamed for a week on YouTube. This will be followed by a conversation moderated by Light Leaks curators Merv Espina and Shireen Seno, with Cobangbang and Eileen Legaspi Ramirez, Associate Professor at the Department of Art Studies, University of the Philippines in Diliman. Explore the multidisciplinary practice of Cobangbang, whose work was included in MCAD’s exhibition The Vexed Contemporary in 2015.

*Register by using the form below. Please indicate the title of the event.

Sept 16-22, 2020     Screening: Katya Guerrero 
Watch the screening here.

Sept 19, 2020     Discussion: Katya Guerrero with Cocoy Lumbao*

Katya Guerrero’s conceptual practice which involves photography, performance, installation, and curatorial work, is the highlight of the program’s second segment where three of the artist’s past works from 1990-1992, will  be streamed for a week on YouTube. A discussion with Guerrero, visual artist and writer Cocoy Lumbao and Light Leaks curators Merv Espina and Shireen Seno follows at 8PM.

*Register for the discussion on or before Sept 17, 2020 by using the form below. Please indicate the title of the event.

Sept 23-30, 2020     Screening: Jean Marie Syjuco
Watch the screening here.

Sept 26, 2020  Discussion: Jean Marie Syjuco with Clarissa Chikiamco*

Eight moving image works from 1986-1992 which document artist Jean Marie Syjuco’s performances are in focus in the program’s third segment, and will be streamed on YouTube for a week. A conversation follows at 8 PM with Syjuco, Clarissa Chikiamco, a curator at National Gallery Singapore, and Light Leaks curators Merv Espina and Shireen Seno, probing into Syjuco’s art process.

*Register for the discussion on or before Sept 24, 2020 by using the form below. Please indicate the title of the event.

ARTISTS

Lena Cobangbang (b. 1976, Manila) studied fine arts at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. Her work is broad-ranging, moving across video, installation, and found objects, to embroidery, cookery, performance, photography, and independent publishing.  She also writes, works as a production designer, and does curatorial work, art administration, exhibition organizing and project management. She has been involved with numerous artist-run spaces and initiatives, such as Surrounded by Water and Future Prospects. Integral to her art practice is doing collaborations with other artists, such as with Yasmin Sison under the created fictional identity of Alice and Lucinda; and with Mike Crisostomo as The Weather Bureau.

Katya Guerrero (b. 1970, Manila) trained in philosophy and anthropology at the New School of Social Research in New York and fine arts at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. Her background in film began with foundational artist-led media arts center Film in the Cities in Minnesota. Guerrero’s conceptual practice has since involved photography, performance, installation, and curatorial work. She co-founded seminal artist-run space Big Sky Mind in 1999 with Ringo Bunoan. With her partner, artist At Maculangan, she currently runs Pioneer Studios, a photographic studio focused on art and culture that also operates Luzviminda, an independent archive of Philippine photography, and artbooks.ph, an independent bookstore.

Jean Marie Syjuco (b. 1952, Manila ) is widely known as an important exponent of performance art in the Philippines. Her performance projects range from conceptual pieces of marked brevity rooted in anti-narrative devices, to thematic spectacles and large-scale collaborations and videos. Bringing attention and institutional support to this maverick art form in the 80s and 90, her experimentations took root much earlier in the 70s as an extension of her visual arts practice, which also involves painting, sculpture and curatorial work. She is currently the director and chief curator of ART LAB, a non-profit developmental art facility that she co-founded with her husband, artist and poet Cesare Syjuco.

DISCUSSANTS

Eileen Legaspi Ramirez is an associate professor at the Department of Art Studies, University of the Philippines in Diliman. She is the associate editor of the Visual Arts volume of the revised Cultural Center of the Philippines Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, and has served as curatorial consultant of Lopez Museum, and as president of the non-profit art organization Pananaw ng Sining Bayan. More recently, she is a visiting scholar with the 2020 Metropolitan Museum of Art C-MAP Asia International Fellowship program. She is currently pursuing doctoral studies with the UP College of Social Work and Community Development.

Cocoy Lumbao is a visual artist and writer. He has regularly written exhibition notes, monographs, and catalogues for several galleries and publications in Manila and abroad. His artworks, which are primarily in the form of video, have also been shown both locally and internationally. He is one of the co-founders of Lost Frames, an arts initiative that stages regular screenings, discussions, and viewing programs for artists’ videos. He currently teaches under the art theory department of the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines in Diliman. 

Clarissa Chikiamco has been working as a curator at National Gallery Singapore since 2012. Prior to moving to Singapore, Chikiamco worked as an independent curator and was the acquisition curator for Ateneo Art Gallery’s inaugural collection of video art in 2012. Together with Rica Estrada and Tenten Mina, she co-founded the festival End Frame Video Art Project in 2006. She curated End Frame’s third edition from 2011-2013, which consisted of seven solo exhibitions with different artists across various venues in Manila. She is currently a PhD student in film studies at King’s College London, writing her thesis on Philippine artists’ moving image.

MODERATORS

Shireen Seno is an artist and filmmaker. She is a recipient of the 2018 Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines and is known for her films, Big Boy (2012) and Nervous Translation (2018), which won several awards and screened at MoMA as part of New Directors/New Films, Tate Modern as part of their Artists’ Cinema programme, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum for Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions, among others. Curatorial projects include Christian Tablazon’s solo exhibition ‘And the World Thickens with Texture Instead of History’, Takahiko Iimura’s ‘Circle+Square’ in Manila, and with Merv Espina, INSTRUCTIONS: a ‘video without video’ exhibit for PABLO Gallery’s 10th anniversary, and The Kalampag Tracking Agency, a program of experimental film and video from the Philippines over the past 30 years. She co-runs Los Otros, a studio and platform dedicated to the intersections of film and art. She is also part of Tito & Tita, a collective whose work spans installation, film, photography and collective actions.

Merv Espina is an artist and researcher based in Quezon City, Metro Manila. His investigations delve into archives and questions knowledge-production in an attempt to mark cracks in discourse and history so the future doesn’t trip over them. He helps run Green Papaya Art Projects, an independent arts initiative founded in 2000, now in the process of tying loose ends as it prepares for closure in 2021. He’s also one of the organizers of WSK Festival of the Recently Possible, an experimental music and media art festival founded in 2008. In 2014, he started the Kalampag Tracking Agency with artist Shireen Seno, an initiative that explores the screening program as participatory archive of Philippine experiments with the moving image. He was part of the curatorial team of SUNSHOWER: Contemporary art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now (2017) at the Mori Art Museum and National Art Centre Tokyo, the largest survey of Southeast Asian artists to be exhibited in Japan. More recently, he was one of the curators of VIVA ExCon 2018, the 15th edition of the longest-running arts biennial in the Philippines.

MCAD PLATFORMS is an avenue for engagement that is independent of the museum’s exhibition and current programming on Learning. It seeks to widen the reach of  MCAD’s audiences to promote contemporary art and design through workshops, lectures, and events for a wide range of demographic. 

*To register for the discussions, use the form below. Please indicate the title of the event.

All MCAD online events are free and open to the public. 

For more information on the online events, click here.