Art Fair Philippines 2025 was at the Ayala Triangle Gardens from Feb. 21 to 23. These past few days, one of the most important art events in the country has shown the vitality of art in the nation and the region.
The event was a gathering of the top galleries in the country; by “top,” this reads as those with massive market reach while having the gravitas of curatorial clout. Several exciting artworks deserve a more extended glance and a more profound read for their significance.
This event declares the Philippine “contemporary.” What is that exactly? It no longer focuses on mastering techniques because mimicry is no longer the point. It is representation as an operation of re-presenting—that is, presenting again or demanding the visitors take another look and look again. Contemporary means an emergence of different issues across the multiple materials at hand for the artist. Through the artist, materials, symbols, and captivating meanings are put to task.
This is very much present in the duo Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan (with Ames Yavuz gallery), who recuperated tools used by the proletariat, such as bolos and sickles, and reconfigured them into beautiful assemblages of wings and a military installation. The wing, seemingly trapped within stakes in their work Abattis (2025), is a hearkening of a failed revolutionary foment from below. The significance of wings is that they are implements of achieving flight and distance; ergo, these are potent symbols as rallying calls for those stuck in the mire and demanding change. Trust the Aquilizans to focus on social activation energies in their artwork, which is reliable and curries favor for the viewers’ introspection.
Another artwork worth mentioning is Marina Cruz’s sculpture Complete Pairs: Christmas 1959 (2024), found at the Gajah Gallery.
It is jarring to see an object usually associated with fragility, such as girlhood and frilly dresses, presented as a monumental bronze work in a pair. The sturdiness and heft of bronze make it an excellent material to situate memory because, after all, what are memories but intangible images with no direct truth? Memories are malleable and can carry different meanings for different people. For example, EDSA 1986 resonates differently for Filipinos who cherish democracy than it does for the Marcoses. Memory in Art is a contemporary utterance because it tethers the present to an imagined past.
This is not to say that “imagined” means fictional, but memories become “official” when embodied in something as monumental as a bronze piece. After all, Cruz was born in 1982, and this pair is from Christmas 1959—so whose memory is this? Is there ownership of memory? Contemporary Art’s task is to examine positions and resituations.
In BPI Presents’ collection is Ryan Rubio’s The Fisherman’s Prayer (2025), a work of absolute vision that understands Art as a revelation of messages often ignored or unknown—particularly by the well-heeled culturati with blunt bangs and hipster shades, clad in dark clothes, who make up much of Art Fair Philippines’ usual visitors.
In this massive cube matrix filled with perforations, we are confronted with what looks like an unfurled fisherman’s net, brimming with the day’s catch. This depiction of masagana (abundance) for the fisherman makes a powerful statement about one of the most imperiled sectors of our nation: the fisherfolk, who face the multi-pronged disasters of Chinese incursions into our waters, a malfunctioning market that exploits their labor, and the ecological destruction brought by climate change.
Confrontation through the engagement of both the aesthetic and the political is very much the contemporary notation of art, offering many utterances.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social.