The Philippine Contemporary Art Network, the UP Vargas Museum, and the Japan Foundation Manila in cooperation with Orange Project present the exhibition Curating Around Islands, which will be on view at the 2F Gallery of the Orange Project in Bacolod from September 23 to October 24.

Curating Around Islands is the outcome of a curatorial development workshop organized by the Japan Foundation Manila, the Philippine Contemporary Art Network (PCAN), and the UP Vargas Museum in February 2022.

The exhibition emerges from the intersections of islands, contemporary art, and curatorship, locating and plotting the curatorial across islands through imaginations of possible futures. These trajectories are grounded in dynamics that are interlocal and multi-site.

The curatorial gesture can be best described as a lively and buoyant reflection on localities as they come in contact with plural sites including cities, regions, and places arrived at different shores and diverse seascapes.

The curatorial projects by workshop grantees Jose Mari Cuartero, Joaquin Singson, and Dominic Zinampan were selected from submissions to the Curatorial Development Workshop series in 2022.

These projects were developed together with coordinators of the Philippine Contemporary Art Network.

The Curatorial Development Workshop is a platform for a vibrant exchange of curatorial ideas and art discussions, with the 2022 edition inspired by the Visayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference (VIVA ExCon) which is a model of a curatorial practice that is at once iterative and itinerant.

The three curatorial projects include Following the Lumba-Lumba, Ring of Fire, and Clouds and Portals. Cuartero probes the reparative potential of following a marine life form such as a lumba-lumba.

Concurrently Singson explores the Pacific Ocean through the lens of the American empire. On the other hand, Zinampan locates the contingency of resources as part of a broader project on the processes of exchange involving various independent arts initiatives across the Philippine archipelago.

Altogether, the curatorial projects embark on an animated, embedded, and buoyant journey through dialogues and traversals of spaces, localities, and histories. (PR)