Lopez Museum marks 50th year with 'Threads' at Rockwell
MANILA, Philippines - The Rockwell Tent will be transformed on Feb. 18 into one large art installation reminiscent of New York underground warehouse happenings.
Titled “Threads,” the exhibit simulates how Lopez Museum has morphed from a site of static display where the contemporary viewer consumes multi-sensory stimuli best visualized by imagining computer users dealing with simultaneously open windows/tabs and hyperlinks pointing to other hyperlinks.
“Threads” takes off from the title of Lopez Memorial Museum’s commemorative book and overall anniversary theme. It launches the series of events marking its 50th anniversary celebration.
Loosely taking after a UP College of Fine Arts exercise called “Paintings Come Alive,” the Lopez Museum will engage a mix of individuals to “cosplay” characters found in iconic works from its collection as well as animate or embody their conception of what museums, as sites of remembrance and narrative-making, do.
Highlights of performances and installation pieces will be on view from Feb. 19 to 25 at the North Court, Rockwell Power Plant Mall, Makati City.
The exhibit features works by Jean Marie Syjuco, Myra Beltran, Leo Abaya, Jef Carnay, Kiri Dalena, Ann Wizer and Ann Pamintuan.
Painter, sculptor, mixed media and performance artist Jean Marie Syjuco’s work metamorphosed the two female figures in Juan Luna’s “España y Filipinas” into Barbies.
Dance artist Myra Beltran, who founded Dance Forum and the Wi-Fi Body Festival, will perform a six- to seven-minute excerpt from Itim Asu, a modern ballet that references Felix Resurrecion Hidalgo’s El Asasinato del Gobernador Bustamante y su hijo to anti-clerical flavor of El Fili and the agential power of artist.
Visual/performance artist Jeffrey Pansacala Carnay will depict the character in Danilo Dalena’s jai-alai series “Talo” in “Empty Pockets,” a performance art lasting from five to 10 minutes.
Ann Wizer, founder of Invisible and Invisible Sisters collective which trains mothers and grandmothers to make new products from waste and revives hand arts, takes off from Jose Tence Ruiz’s “Topless Victorian” where she combines found objects made out of trash woven into tapestry and model garments.
A pioneering member of the Movement 8 design alliance, designer Ann Tiukinhoy Pamintuan will present “Family Chair” and “Pie Chair,” functional lounge pieces as art pieces and as provision for elderly guests.
Artist Leo Abaya, who received an MFA from the Winchester School of Art of the University of Southampton in the UK in 2004, will showcase “Generator,” a video installation playing on spinning/unraveling thread/fabrication, archival footage of museum’s opening in Pasay, as well as objects in trove. The installation is interactive in the sense that museum official will be asked to set off kinetic rotating sculpture that in turn activates video.
Filmmaker, sculptor, painter and activist Kiri Dalena’s “Watch History Repeat Itself” is a video projection based on LVN archival material. It will be projected onto an engraved marble surface.
Dalena attended documentary filmmaking and cinematography workshops at the Mowelfund Film Institute.
