When you hear sounds, what do you see? When you see colors, what do you hear?
For the Ortigas Art Festival 2021, vMeme Contemporary Art Gallery presents the group exhibit “A QUIET CHAOS” with a selection of works by Roman Soleño, Alaya Esguerra, Little Wing Luna, Avie Felix and Gary Rojas. These five artists come together with a common curiosity to visualize silences and noises -- not only by denotative terms but also metaphorically as illustrations of life, a halting of that life, and the order of no order at all and vice versa.
The past year has been a series of changes on what we can see and what we can hear. Now lives are “curated” on what’s available at home, through our gadgets or by our limited freedom to go places. In this exhibit, sound and visual art collaborate and intertwine in process and object to explore the nuances of how what we hear and see affect not only each other but also other aspects of being and living.
“A Quiet Chaos” opens on February 24 and runs until March 31 at the Ground Floor of Estancia Mall East Wing, along with exhibits of other artists and art collectives.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
AVIE FELIX is a curator, teacher, writer-researcher, multi-disciplinary artist, and advocate of gender, culture and environment. Avie is a graduate of Art Studies and candidate for a master's degree in Art History at the University of the Philippines Diliman where she taught cinema and currently teaches humanities. Avie is the founding program director of visual art and design school Young Artists' Studio from 2009 to present. A member of Independent Curators International or ICI New York, Avie has been curating exhibitions in Manila since 2011 in museums and alternative art spaces while she also exhibits her works locally and internationally. In 2012, she opened her own art gallery called vMeme Contemporary Art Gallery where she currently serves as head curator in its spaces in Alabang, Ortigas and Quezon City. Avie is also a member of the executive council of the National Committee on Art Galleries (NCCA) and contributor to several non-government organizations and art associations. In between shifting hats, Avie paints, embroiders, dances, sings, acts and writes prose and poetry. Her research work focuses on feminist history while her art tackles the “self/selves” as reflection of communities and societies.
LITTLE WING LUNA is a multi-form artist producing street photographs and paintings on a daily basis. Her works are unapologetic, free and yet authentic and reflect many layers of being and breaking free from being a woman in contemporary Manila. She first exhibited with vMeme Contemporary in 2012 with the well-received show CHASING THE QUOTIDIAN where she presented documentary and street photography with fellow artist Jo A. Santos. While more popularly known for her work in photography (most especially by her ‘Off to Work’ series), Wing crossed over the other side of visual arts in her first exhibit of paintings called Tomelo o Dejelo (Take It or Leave It). This series speaks of her personality, a heavy influence of Kahlo and her unapologetic stance on her life lived with art, fun, liquor and rock n’ roll. MusicIn this exhibit, she presents wearable art – a play on incorporating art in daily life, lockdown or not, in an in-your-face fashion. Take it or leave it.
ALAYA ESGUERRA is what you would call a young emerging artist mainly because she is young, but her experience in creating sound art, music, painting, sculpture and illustration spans 11 years. Training formally in several disciplines – music, dance and visual arts, Alaya has participated in more than 20 group exhibitions and art fairs since the age of 5. Her current art practice revolves around the interdisciplinary aesthetics of sound/music and visual expressions in sculpture and painting. She perceives art production as a window to have a bigger understanding of the world one artwork at a time. Disciplined, inquisitive and observant, Alaya’s works are filled with elements of popular culture, surrealist images, and a tug-of-war of bright and subdued tones. Alaya plays several music instruments alongside painting; both forms co-exist in her studio work.
Roman Soleño is a multi- disciplinary artist working with intermedia painting and assemblage. Roman studied Fine Arts (Painting) at the University of the Philippines Diliman and was granted artist residencies in Australia (Campbell town Art Centre, 2018); Cambodia (2018); and Manila through the LSC-AIR Program of Light and Space Contemporary in 2013. A prolific and versatile artist, his works drawings, paintings, collages, assemblages, sculptures and even large scale installation pieces relate to the ambivalence of wall-boundedness and uprightness, institutional and uninstitutional, celebratory and questioning. His process adhere to the use of discarded and recycled materials --- an exercise in assembling materials from possible wastes. Also a teacher, tattoo artist, musician and contributing artist in many art collectives that actively work to serve people for the masses, Roman’s growing body of work visualizes his commitment to using art and music as tools for social transformation.
GARY ROJAS is a resin and fiberglass sculptor with over 8 years of active art practice locally and internationally. His expertise in such media and sculpture techniques inevitably paved the way for his engagement in toy design. Gary debuted as a toy designer last year with his Maraudent and Artisan toy figures and is now releasing his fourth creation in an upcoming ToyCon abroad. A graduate of fine arts from the Technological University of the Philippines, he was a residency grantee of Big Sky Mind and Simbalikhaan Artist Community. Active in art-based community work, Gary is also a founding member of Tutok Karapatan under Ugatlahi Artists Collective, Banta Artist Initiative and a member of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines. His pieces in this exhibit are reiterations of THE ARTISAN – a character derived from a craftsman who creates in order to express emotions, make new creatures and claim justice.
