“Kabilang-tabing ng panahong ito (Behind the curtain of this age),” curated by Carlos Quijon Jr., has been selected to be the country’s official participation at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, the world’s most prestigious and prominent international contemporary art exhibition, in 2024. It will feature the works of Mark Salvatus.
The selected exhibition simultaneously explores currents of mysticism and modernity, the deep past and the looming future, as well as the coincidence of the cosmopolitan and the vernacular. It revolves around the ethno-ecologies of Mt. Banahaw, a three-peaked forested mountain located at the boundary between Laguna and Quezon and Lucban, the artist’s hometown. It draws inspiration from how Mt. Banahaw has shaped the music and faith of the people. The title comes from the words of Apolinario de la Cruz or Hermano Pule, the radical spiritual firebrand, lodestar of the people of Lucban, who resisted the discriminations of the Spanish Catholic church.
Quijon Jr.’s recently curated exhibitions at Calle Wright, Gravity Art Space and University of the Philippines Vargas Museum. He cocurated the traveling exhibition series “Afro-Southeast Asia: Pragmatics and Geopoetics of Art during a Cold War” in Singapore (2021), Manila (2021-2022), and Busan (2022).
Salvatus is a contemporary artist living and working in Quezon City. His works have been presented in different exhibitions including the Asian Art Biennale and the Philippine Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale (2016), among many others around the world.
The jury comprised Corazón S. Alvina, director of the Museo ng Kaalamáng Katutubò and a seasoned cultural worker and curator from Manila; Biljana Ciric, an interdependent curator based in Shanghai; Alexandra Munroe, Ph.D., director of curatorial affairs for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project; Victorino Mapa Manalo, chair of the National Commissioner for Culture and the Arts and commissioner of the Philippine Pavilion; and Senate president pro tempore Loren Legarda, project principal and visionary of the Philippine participation at the Venice Art and Architecture Biennale since 2015.
The Philippine Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia will open to the public on April 20, 2024.