CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS IN REGION I

Tattoo de Iloco: An addition to the burgeoning contemporary art scene in

Ilocos Norte

The tête-à-tête with Janer Santos, a fine contemporary Ilocano artist

La union, Philippine’s contemporary artist May Ann Licudine

Her art is inspired by her own dreams, nightmares, childhood memories, as

well as God, nature, music and other great artists. She enjoys dreaming,
listening to music, and setting her imagination free into wide colorful skies.
Once inspiration hits her, May Ann’s paintings and drawings radiate and
overflow with her emotions. She particularly loves making illustrations of her
very own whimsical characters Babu and Abu the Cat.
 PANGASINAN’S CONTEMPORARY ARTIST, BADONG
BERNAL

The late Salvador Bernal, also known as “Badong Bernal,” was

acknowledged guru of contemporary Filipino theater design. He was also
an Asna awardee in 2011.
"Asna" is an old term of the Pangasinan word "asin." It describes the good
quality of a man’s character or his demeanor.

 MUSEUM HOTEL OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS IN ILOCOS SUR

At the heart of the heritage city stands Hotel Luna, a hotel museum that houses over 200
artworks made by prestigious National Artists and contemporary painters like BenCab, Malang,
 Vicente Manansala, Cesar Legaspi, Arturo Luz, José Joya, Guillermo Tolentino, Federico
Aguilar Alcuaz, Daniel Tan, Napoleon Abueva, Ronald Ventura, Arturo Luz, and Juan Luna –
from whom the hotel takes its name.

CONTEMPORARY PHILIPPINE ARTS FROM THE REGIONS

TIMELINE OF PHILIPPINE ART
 HISTORY
As an art-critical or historical category––one that might designate a style of art, a tendency
among others, or a period in the history of art––“contemporary art” is relatively recent. In art
world discourse throughout the world, it appears in bursts of special usage in the 1920s and
1930s, and again during the 1960s, but it remains subsidiary to terms––such as “modern art,”
“modernism,” and, after 1970, “postmodernism”––that highlight art’s close but contested
relationships to social and cultural modernity. “Contemporary art” achieves a strong sense, and
habitual capitalization, only in the 1980s. Subsequently, usage grew rapidly, to become
ubiquitous by 2000. Contemporary art is now the undisputed name for today’s art in professional
contexts and enjoys widespread resonance in public media and popular speech. Yet, its
valiance for any of the usual art-critical and historical purposes remains contested and
uncertain. To fill in this empty signifier by establishing the content of this category is the concern
of a growing number of early-21st-century publications.

To support this role, the Philippine Contemporary Art Network (PCAN) was launched on Dec. 8,
2017.
A project of Senator Loren Legarda, it is meant to recognize and hone the skills of artists and
curators.
Temporarily based at the University of the Philippines’ Vargas Museum in Diliman, Quezon City,
the PCAN’s inaugural project, Place of Region in the Contemporary, focuses on the regions
importance in contemporary art.
During an exhibition walkthrough on Jan. 19, PCAN Director Patrick D. Flores explained: “It’s
meant to actually harness the resources of Philippine contemporary art. [Of course], we all know
that it’s a very active scene. Many artists are doing work, artist collectives are thriving, and the
market is strong. The discourse is higher. One of the aims of PCAN is to consolidate and
harness the resources of Philippine contemporary art.”
Mr. Flores cited the three nodes around which the inaugural project was built — knowledge
production and circulation; exhibition and curatorial analysis; public engagement and artistic
formation.
The project delves in research on art history, the historical context of contemporary art, and
locating its roots and trajectories, as well as various sources of its emergence.
“There are many ways to define when the contemporary begins and when the modern
ends — that is a debate among art historians. But one way to do it is locate some turning
points at which expressive practice tried to question certain conventions or institutions
of modernism itself,” Mr. Flores said.
The regional artists highlighted in the exhibit are Jess Ayco from Bacolod (1916-1982), Santiago
Bose from Baguio (1949-2002), Abdulmari Imao from Sulu (1936-2014), and Junyee from Los
Baños, Laguna (b. 1942).