Art for heart’s sake
by Nicole Y. Tantoco on October 31, 2009
Just like there’s “unity” in “community”, there’s “art” in “heart.”
From August 8 to 15, the Filipino graphic arts scene made its presence felt all over Metro Manila through Manila Design Week, a series of colorful events celebrating the glory of the Filipino creative mind. From Bonifacio High Street to Cubao Expo, established designers and student artists alike gathered together to pronounce the fact that indeed, Filipino art is a living, breathing reality.
Put together by organizers Team Manila, Bratpack and Ayala Malls, Manila Design Week 2009 aimed to showcase Manila’s undiscovered talent. More importantly, it was also about providing artists with a venue to come together and feel like a community. As Nico Bacani, General Manager of Team Manila, says, “We’re not just opening our circle but the industry to the public. We’re saying ‘We want you to be part of us.’”
For the future
Future Design, a student art exhibit, exemplifies Nico’s sentiments. Launched last August 11 in the Glorietta 5 Activity Center, the aim of FutureDesign was to give young Filipino designers a voice. Students from over eleven universities, including UP, Ateneo and La Salle participated in a competition to create the best shirt design expressing the theme “Message from the Future.”
Artworks featuring everything from rocket balloons to jeepneys hung in bright contrast to the black walls. With themes such as “saving the environment” and “national pride,” social responsibility seemed to be on the agenda of many of the student artists.
From over 200 entries, 46 of the most original and exceptional artworks were specially selected to be part of the exhibit. “A lot of the designs were so progressive,” says Nico. “It’s not the usual traditional Filipino style anymore but rather something similar to what you might see in Tokyo, Singapore, etc… wherein the designs are very minimalist.”
Some Atenean entries included Tata Yap’s “Bukas Na Ang Bukas” and Genevieve Go’s “Ingat.” Gen’s design featured a cute, green, cartoon robot sternly warning the audience in Filipino to be careful, while holding a host of potentially dangerous ‘balloon-rockets’ in its hand.
“It stemmed from playing with the Filipino term ‘ingat’ or ‘take care,’” says Gen of her quirky design. “The rockets as balloons are just indicative of the kind of ‘future’ we’re reaping for ourselves where nature is pretty much gone and everything is mechanical and artificial,” adds Gen.
Young artists shine
The event was hosted by ex-Channel V VJ Clara Balaguer. Overall, one grand-prize winner and four runners-up were announced. Narisse Gepilano, a talented, young graphic designer, was announced as the grand prize winner. Scrawled onto a simple white background, her work featured a thoughtful, spunky-looking girl with her colorful ideas just sprouting all around her head.
The other four runners-up were Clara Obmerga (AdMU), Remster Bautista (CIIT), Chelseah Ngo (DLSU) and Paolo Roa (SHIFT). Narisse won a Nokia phone, a lomo camera, a JanSport bag and the chance to have her design manufactured and sold in Team Manila stores along with all the runners-up.
After the awarding ceremony, host Clara Balaguer gathered the audience together to participate in the Flash Mob event. This was an activity where audience members got to doodle on each other’s shirts. For this reason, invitees were asked to bring a white shirt and coloring materials to the exhibit beforehand.
The reception of the audience was tremendous. Justin Gui said, “People I didn’t even know just started drawing on me. I started doodling on strangers’ shirts too.” Carmen Del Prado, a student of De La Salle -College of Saint Benilde’s Multimedia Arts Program added, “Everybody just let go and went all out expressing themselves. It was really fun. It was like there was really a community.”
The evolution of art and artists
But apart from giving the youth a voice and creating a sense of community within the Philippine graphic arts scene, Nico believes that Manila Design Week could actually help legitimize the Philippine art industry. “Filipino artistry usually tends to be all about art for art’s sake. But it’s not just about that. Art for art’s sake is beautiful but it doesn’t achieve its function [because] we have to earn some sort of living,” says Nico.
Because of this, Nico argues that for art to achieve more relevance, it should have a social element. “Last year with the proceeds from the ‘I Am Ninoy’ movement, we were able to send 150 scholars to school,” Nico says of Team Manila’s recent social efforts.
With Manila Design Week, Team Manila hopes to break all stereotypes and common misconceptions about art. Social responsibility and art, according to Nico, now readily go hand-in-hand. Traditional notions about who artists are, what art is and what it can become are indeed changing.
Nico says that one of Team Manila’s legacies has always been community. “We named ourselves ‘Team Manila’ because if we were acknowledged internationally we wanted everything to come back to Manila. We have a lot of faith in the country. We believe there’s a lot of creativity here in the visual arts and literature that the Philippines has to offer.”
