THE First Congressional District of South Cotabato celebrates the Kalilangan Festival and the National Arts Month 2022 with a one-man exhibit of its multi-talented artist cum educator Leonardo Rey S. Cariño — a visual artist, interior designer, curator, theater director, choreographer, cultural worker, and researcher — focusing on the common tao and their livelihood.
Titled “Opisyo” — meaning occupation, line of work, way of life, and business — Cariño was commissioned to render in big canvases the economic activities of the indigenous peoples (IPs), Moro, and settlers of the congressional district that covers the southern municipalities of Polomolok, Tampakan, Tupi and, just until 2022, the independent City of General Santos. (On 15 September 2021, House Bill No. 10021 authored by Representative Ferdinand Hernandez officially mandates General Santos as a lone district, separate from South Cotabato).
Like the rest of Mindanao, the IPs, Moro, and settlers lived in harmony in South Cotabato and this peaceful co-existence in a thriving economy is what the three murals and several smaller but still big paintings in enamels with gold leaf on canvas display in bold colors in Cariño’s distinct and carefree brushstrokes at the Events Centr of SM City General Santos from February 18 to 28, 2022.
Cariño is one of the promoters of the creative industries in General Santos City and started the Annual Teatro Ambahanon Summer Dance Workshop (TASDW), a training ground for upstart and pre-professional dance-theater artists. A graduate of Bachelor in Interior Design at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, he started painting as he started his design practice right off college. He has had several one-man and group shows hence.
He was elected Executive Committee member of the National Committee on Visual Arts NCVA of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) in early 2000. He shifted to the performing arts and founded the famed Teatro Ambahanon (Hibiscus Prize for Excellence winner of China Asean Theater Week) of Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Colleges in General Santos City where he also works as Cultural Development coordinator.
He returned to visual arts upon joining the Philippine Women’s College of Davao Helena Benitez School of Arts and Design as chairman of PWC’s Interior Design Program and joined group shows in Davao Zamboanga, Cagayan De Oro and General Santos Cities, including two International exhibits Under One Sky during the Brunei Darussalam Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines (BIPM) International Festival of Cultures and Selingan Seni (Artistic Neighbors) a show of Mindanao and Sabahan artists. He is among the Region 12’s artist presented by Metropolitan Museum in My City My SM My Art in February 2018. In 2017, he joined Davao artist Anoy Catague in a two-man show, Duyog, at Museo de Oro at the Xavier Ateneo in Cagayan de Oro city and The Gift of Mindanao Music as Heritage at Museo Dabawenyo, held as a component activity of the museum for the Heritage month. His last solo show, Bai Nu Galang (Women of the Brass) was mounted in Ateneo de Davao University and was remounted in Cotabato City for the Shariff Kabunsuan Festival.
Carino was Featured Artist in the second edition of the Mindanao Art Fair where he assembled 240 drawings of Mindanao Tricycles into a mural. Called MinTODA Art Project, a mural was set up at the art Fair but that has exhibits in the cities of Tagum, Pagadian Koronadal and General Santos and Misdayap town as response to the Pandemic that limited physical interactions for art viewers. The art project became a carrier project in response to difficulties in gathering a physical audience; in essence the MinTODA art project brought the art fair to the audience who cannot travel to Davao. MinTOS went on to become one of the projects presented by NCCA National Committee on Visual Arts’ Gawad Bagong Biswal for arts initiatives designed and made as response to the challenges of the pandemic.
“Opisyo” is his seventh one-man exhibit.