The finissage or closing ceremony of the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale in late November was a momentous and bittersweet one. It was the first time for the Philippines to participate in this particular exhibit, and only the third time the country had joined the Venice Biennale.
At the Philippine Pavilion, two of the three curators, Sudarshan Khadka Jr. and Juan Paolo de la Cruz, were joined by chairperson of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Felipe de Leon Jr. and Ambassador of the Philippine Embassy in Rome Domingo Nolasco in the symbolic dismantling of one of the exhibits.
“Muhon: Traces of an Adolescent City,” was housed in three rooms in the 18th century Palazzo Mora, and featured the works of six architects/cultural teams and three contemporary visual artists. Curators Leandro Y. Locsin Jr., Khadka and De la Cruz of Leandro V. Locsin Partners (LVLP) selected the nine after they had presented their interpretations of their chosen muhon (or marker) in History, (the past), Modernity (the present) and Conjecture (the future).
The nine participants and their subjects were: Poklong Anading for KM 0, Tad Ermitano for Pandacan Bridge, Mark Salvatus for Binondo, Eduardo Calma for the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC), Jorge Yulo for Mandarin Oriental Manila, 8×8 Design Studio Co. for the Magsaysay Center, C/S Design Consultancy for Pasig River, Lima Architecture for the Makati Stock Exchange, and Manosa & Co. for the Coconut Palace.
“The resulting works showed what Manila was like before, what it is now, and what it could be in the future,” Khadka said.
Old Manila
“If Rome has the Pantheon and the Colosseum, Old Manila also had its own sense of identity. You could see this in the articulation of the windows of the houses, and our strong connection to the Pasig River and its bridges but then this was all leveled by the war.”
For his part, De Leon, who as NCCA head had commissioned the Philippine Pavilion, noted the “crucial role” architecture plays in human life.
“Well-defined forms and of sacred national shrines and monuments can be effective instruments for unifying our people and enhancing the sense of nationhood.”
In the years that followed World War II, new buildings were constructed one after the other, many simultaneously. “From the ashes, in the last 60 years or so, we have created so much,” Khadka said. “Now, Manila is considered a mega city and one of the densest cities in the world.”
However, even with the frenetic pace of building that followed after the war, we were also tearing down structures as quickly as we built them.
“This rapid sense of change—destruction, creation and destruction—is a cycle that prohibits us from understanding what our built environment means to us because we haven’t had the time to understand its value,” Khadka said. He then related this general unease to that of an adolescent trying to find his or her identity in a changing world.
“We felt the need to ask this really strong question: are we demolishing our buildings before we’ve had the time to fall in love with them? We felt it was timely to do this experiment for the Biennale where we appropriated the metaphor of a muhon. These markers of space and time are also markers of our own identity,” he added.
Return to Venice
The country’s return to the Venice Biennale was initiated and spearheaded by Sen. Loren Legarda.
In 2015, the Philippines returned to the Venice Art Biennale after a 51-year hiatus with “Tie a String Around the World.”
For that exhibit, curator Patrick Flores came up with the theme that dealt with “world-making and the formation of empires.” The featured works then were by Manuel Conde, Carlos “Botong” Francisco, Manny Montelibano and Jose Tence Ruiz with performances by artist David Medalla.
In an earlier statement, the senator described the act of building as “not only about creating new structures all the time. It is also about realizing communities and connecting the present with the past.”
The exhibit “Muhon: Traces of an Adolescent City” may have ended on Nov. 27 after a six-month run in Venice but there are plans to restage it in different parts of the Philippines next year so that more Filipinos can see and hopefully learn from it.
In the meantime, interested parties can view “Tie a String Around the World” that was first shown at last year’s Venice Art Biennale at the UP Vargas Museum from Dec. 9-Feb. 18, 2017.
“After representing the Philippines and making an impact in the 2015 Venice Art Biennale, it is now in the country’s premier state university for Filipinos to see,” said Legarda.
The country’s participation in the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale was made possible through the collaborative efforts of the NCCA, Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Office of Senator Loren Legarda.