My work/s will be featured in an upcoming group show
FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER
Forever and ever and ever and ever looks at the under-explored but culturally unique phenomenon of ‘tropical summer’ in the Philippines through the works of emerging contemporary artists working from the island nation. The exhibition examines ‘tropical summer’ as an imported cultural lens adapted from countries with temperate climates through which Filipinos understand and experience their hot and humid season (May – July) each year.
VALENTINE WILLIE FINE ART (SINGAPORE) 39 Keppel Road ARTSPACE @ Helutrans Tanjong Pagar Distripark, #02-04 (Access by Passenger Lift #6) Singapore 089065
It seems that Mark Salvatus has committed himself to a lifetime project of examining “spaces” - public, private and whatever's in between. Working closely with people who inhabit them, Salvatus captures the state of these communities through the objects that belong directly to or are loosely associated with their occupants.
In Courtyard, Salvatus provides a semi-fictional version of his Manila City Jail immersion. In the exhibition, he provides contextual elements of the actual space such as local gang logos that marked territorial borders in the prison itself and tattoos that designate individual inmates.
As a “courtyard” is an enclosed space open to the sky, Salvatus then offers an aerial view of Bilibid itself. Essential to Courtyard,this map serves as point of reference, to a place in question. With the original plan of remaking the space, he embarks on a narrative of a whodunit from an actual event of a riot in Manila City Jail between two rival gangs. From an investigation from the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, Salvatus does his own inspection in Courtyard. With existing makeshift weapons he was familiarized to in his immersion, he places them traced and “wrapped” as confiscated objects in an “evidence wall”.
The value of objects is once again put into the forefront of Salvatus' oeuvre. Things are symbols of themselves. Pretty much, an improvised knife that killed is an improvised knife that killed. “Do or die” is far from a determining existential cry but is a gang slogan – word/s as objects themselves. It is also much so that an evidence of a crime scene do not say “why” foremost but confirms the “what”. Likewise, Salvatus gives credit to objects being constitutive parts of a whole. As with Courtyard, the objects – adaptations and variants – point to an existing community that Salvatus has re-constructed into a meta-narrative with his own investigation and conclusions.
- Siddharta Perez
Courtyard October 17 - November 14, 2009 PABLO Gallery Fort Taguig, Philippines
MANILA, Philippines – Officials from the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) on Sunday conducted a security inspection at the Manila City Jail a day after a riot among prisoners caused the death of one inmate. - Sophia Dedace, GMANews.TV
In this project, Salvatus finds a news report about a deadly riot inside the Manila City Jail in 2008 and retells it in a different perspective in his new show – Courtyard in Pablo Gallery Fort.
Working with communities and experiences, Salvatus reinvestigates the incident with various media. Making a re-enactment of some sort, he presents the story in a Crime Scene Investigation-type of exhibition. Different visual images are juxtaposed in the said courtyard—from drawings, to installations and objects.
Changing the relationship of the past to the present, the account of the riotnow becomes a found object that Salvatus tries to visualize using “evidence” he collected inside the Manila City Jail.Using interviews, photographs, and his immersion experience inside the compound, he comes up with his own visual conclusion and combines them with his personal ideas—ideas that make a strong impression and emotional tension, establishing an intimate and charged dialogue with the audience—will they be familiarized by it or be alienated?
"Secret Garden", 2009 Mixed media installation mural on the wall, slit wall, plastic bottles, framed story new commission for Sungdu-an 5 National Museum, Manila Philippines
Sungdu-an 5 Current, September 30 - November 15, 2009 opening- Sept 30, Wednesday 6PM
Museum of Filipino People Finance Rd. cor Teodoro Valencia (Agrifina), Manila
Curator (Luzon): Irma Lacorte Project head: Dr. Patrick Flores
Imagine magazine, 7 For All Mankind, and The Manila Bulletin present The Spoils of Love: An Imagine the Silence Exhibit.Featuring The Museum of Broken Relationship and Solitude and Separation: 9 art collaborations by Filipino artists, designers, and creative professionals.
The exhibit runs September 15 to 30, 2009 at the Ayala Malls Greenbelt 5 and 3.
collab with Charles Buenconsejo, J. Pacena and Wesley Valenzuela
Nations were "imagined communities" because "the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion", and traced their origins back to vernacular print journalism, which by its very nature was limited with linguistic zones and addressed a common audience. - Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson Broken Map Treaty, 2009 (National Museum) Traces on the wall, acrylic, flag, documents, table 3-day participatory project CCCL, Pusat Kebudayan PrancisSurabaya, Indonesia
* I asked different people to trace their personal belongings on the wall to an imaginary national museum to come up with an imaginary map - an imaginary country. Reenacted the Treaty of Paris in 1898 wherein I sold each island for 2,000 Rupiah - Spain sold the Philippines for $20,000,00.00 to the Americans.
There have been several models of early human migration to the Philippines. Since H. Otley Beyer first proposed his wave migration theory, numerous scholars have approached the question of how, when and why humans first came to the Philippines. The sea-faring tool-using Indonesian group who arrived about 5,000 to 6,000 years ago and were the first immigrants to reach the Philippines by sea. On Palawan, the long and small island in western Visayas, human bones were found dating to about 22.000 years ago. Stone tools from ancient times were found too on Palawan. The age of the tools is estimated to be about 30.000 years old. An analyses showed that the tools have similar features as tools which were found on Kalimantan (Indonesia).
Europeans in search of spices later colonized most of the Austronesian-speaking countries of the Asia-Pacific region, beginning from the 16th century with the Portuguese colonization of some parts of Indonesia (present-day East Timor), Spanish colonization the Philippines, Palau, Guam and the Mariana Islands and the Dutch colonization of the Indonesian archipelago. In 1898, the Treaty of Paris was signed- turning over the Philippines from Spain to the United States of America. The U.S. ultimately paid Spain 20 million dollars for possession of the Philippines. The Treaty specified that Spain would cede to the United States the archipelago known as the Philippine Islands, and comprehending the islands lying within the a specified line.
Tabi Tabi Po A Filipino Folklore exhibit and sound installation 1:AM Gallery San Francisco, CA USA Nov 13- Dec 12, 2009 organized by Pablo gallery (Manila), Bindlestiff, KULARTS and Fabric8
RECENT:
Group Exhibition: The Spoils of Love: Imagine the Silence exhibit runs September 15 to 30, 2009 at the Ayala Malls Greenbelt 5 and 3., Makait City, Philippines curated by Rica Estrada
Daloy: 40 years multi-media and multi-sensory exhibit Cultural Center of the Philippines Bulwagang Juan Luna (Main Gallery) and different sites on Sept. 18 curated by Claro Ramirez
My work/s will be featured in an upcoming group show
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