Explosive art at the Ateneo Art Awards 2011
MANILA, Philippines - Now in its eight year, the Ateneo Art Awards has been recognizing young Filipino talent and granting them residencies in New York, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and the UK. This year’s top three winners are Bembol dela Cruz for his exhibit “House Blends” at Blanc Compound, Kawayan De Guia for “Bomba,” a multimedia installation, and Maria Taniguchi for “Echo Studies,” both at the Vargas Museum.
The works of “House Blends” employ the skilled techniques of classic still life paintings, with various sundry household items instead of fruit and flowers. Together they form recipes, however, for homemade explosives taken from The Anarchist Cookbook and the Internet. The subversion of the familiar and the mundane highlights the danger inherent in the everyday.
Kawayan De Guia takes us on a trip to the ‘70s, with disco-balled missiles, bomba film clips and jukebox music. It was a time of decadence and political uncertainty, and sexy films were used as a weapon of distraction during martial law — just as scandal and entertainment keep us mollified in the midst of today’s wars.
Maria Taniguchi’s installations explored the processes behind art-making, with site-specific installations that included graphite drawings, an absentee sculpture, and a documentary film on marble carvers. They work as fractured memory pieces as the artist returns to, or searches for her roots.
The Ateneo Art Awards is presented by YStyle, the Ateneo Art Gallery, Shangri-La Plaza, Smart, Metro Society, and the New York Art Project funded by Marcel Crespo.
