Hidlaw
10 Dec - 05 Jan 2017
GROUP SHOW
Hidlaw (A Christmas Show)
Group show
10 December 2016 - 5 January 2017
Tin-aw Art Gallery
Opening Reception: 10 December 2016, Saturday, 6pm
Hidlaw, Tin-aw Art Gallery’s final exhibition for 2016, is their Christmas show which will feature paintings from sixteen artists. The show’s title is an Ilonggo word (akin to “yearn”) that has a bittersweet quality to it since it is used to express the feeling of missing a person or place while simultaneously deriving or at least remembering the joy attached to that specific memory.
This sentiment pervades the month of December. The approaching Christmas season might prompt this longing for quality time with the family or this certain nostalgia for one’s childhood. One may recall every nook and cranny of their hometown; the favored establishments, the cherished spots, the ancestral home. December is also the time for one to view the year in retrospect, to examine the ups and downs, and to reminisce over some memories held dearly.
Unfortunately, the passage of time has revealed that our cortices can only handle so much information; these capsules or figments eventually wither and corrode. Since we mediate the storage and retrieval of actual experiences individually, we also inevitably taint these with fiction and as such, the only way to remember anything is to resort to imagination; to reconstruct the image out of the bits and fragments immediately dispersed upon perception.
Yearning, the act of recollecting these traces, is a bittersweet activity/mood. It temporarily makes us feel happy and concomitantly melancholic since we become aware of how the foundations of our happiness appear to be fragile and may disintegrate at any moment. We therefore cling to these memories with a tighter grip. However, to invest emotions in the past is not absolutely futile or foolish—all of these continue to haunt us and project into the future, influencing our actions and shaping our character.
Hidlaw will examine the idea of longing for people and places through artworks by : Leonard Aguinaldo, Bea Alcala, Pope Bacay, Francis Commeyne, Nathalie Dagmang, Cian Dayrit, Antipas Delotavo, Renato Habulan, Geraldine Javier, Mark Justiniani, Kitty Kaburo, Joy Mallari, Ferdie Montemayor, Henrielle Pagkaliwangan, Lee Paje, and Antony Palomo. All will address the idea of “hidlaw” from different perspectives and via distinct approaches.
Hidlaw will run from 10 December 2016 to 5 January 2017 at the Tin-aw Art Gallery.