Road Map Series<\/em> has mainly featured artists from Davao City\nalthough other artists from Camiguin, General Santos, and other places have\nbeen included in some issues. With a Palanca Award pedigree, Ayala’s art\nwriting reads like poetry – sharing the heart and soul of the artists and the\nworks rather than subjecting them solely to art critical reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe painter, Don Gurrea, has maintained his art and\nculture column in Dipolog City for the past two years. I had maintained a\nsyndicated art and culture column in two Mindanao dailies and one Mindanao\nwebsite for three years – now defunct since I transferred to Manila in 2005.\nOther visual artists who have written on Mindanao visual arts in local or\nnational papers include Abe Garcia, Philip Somozo, Willy Arsena, Ivan\nMacarambon, Chico Barreto, and, just recently, Kelly Ramos-Palaganas. The\nabsence of art writers leaves them no choice but to write about the event they\nare engaged in if they want it to be publicized and publicly documented for\nposterity. Visual art practitioners like National Artist Abdulmari Imao and\nAbraham Sakili (who is also an academic) have also written about Mindanao art.\nArt writing has come few and far between maybe because the writers would rather\ncreate art than write about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many Mindanao-based writers who have covered Mindanao art and culture in general and occasionally featured the visual arts include Lina Sagaral-Reyes, Ameta Suarez\u00ad-Taguchi, Terry Betonio, Mozart Pastrano, and Christine Godinez-Ortega.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As most writers are art practitioners themselves, a\nsense of camaraderie and shared experience in the small Mindanao art world\nencourages non-confrontational commentary rather than critical discourse in\nprint. This same intimacy promotes a critical discourse that is immediate and\npersonal – a kind of “organic criticism” that is sensitive,\nconstructive, relational, and even collaborative. Feedback is in real time and\noften inputted in the work. This is radically different from the “Western\nmodel” emphasizing individual creative genius, which is revealed during an\nexhibition where critics can respond to “after the fact.” The Panit-Bukog (Skin-Bones)<\/em> Mindanao\nTraveling Art Exhibit saw “organic criticism” in action when artists\npeer-reviewed concepts, studies, and art works in participatory curatorship.\nThe articles by artists-writers that publicly documented the event were\nconsequently informed writings that could not have taken on the posture of\nobjective criticality nor detached readings. Yet the non-confrontational stand\nmight have in a way muffled necessary critiques.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNon-Mindanawon art critics and writers have written about Mindanao art. But the lack of grounding in the realities of art making in Mindanao, a result of the physical and social distance of Mindanao from the rest of the country, is often revealed in critically-framed but context-thin writing. Contemporary art in Mindanao has shown the ability to inconveniently defy persistent stereotypes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Should Mindanao artists care if they are written about or not? No, if they are happy in pure artistic creation; yes, if they want to make their presence felt and assert their role as transformative agents of society. Mindanao art writing matters as much as ever – not to play cheerleaders to a fragmented community, but to articulate, celebrate and sometimes question the artistic landscape of Mindanao. More importantly, Mindanao art writing is essential in engaging artists and communities in making meaning of contemporary realities in Mindanao and the world where it belongs… and sharing these meanings in unmuffled voices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
First Published: 18.07.2007 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Zamboanga del Norte Federation of Visual Artists (ZANFEVA), a confederation of four art groups in Dipolog City and Sindangan with a combined membership of more than 50 artists, opened its inaugural exhibit in October 2006 at the Provincial Art Gallery located at the second floor of the province’s Convention and Exhibition Center, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3539],"tags":[3703,3697,3704,3706,3701,3709,3696,3700,3702,3705,3690,3692,3693,3708,3698,3689,3694,3707,3695,259,3699,3691],"language":[7785],"writer":[7840],"class_list":["post-27290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-visual-arts","tag-abdulmari-imao","tag-abe-garcia","tag-abraham-sakili","tag-ameta-suarez-taguchi","tag-chico-barreto","tag-christine-godinez-ortega","tag-don-gurrea","tag-ivan-macarambon","tag-kelly-ramos-palaganas","tag-lina-sagaral-reyes","tag-mindanao","tag-mindanao-goldstar-daily","tag-mindanews","tag-mozart-pastrano","tag-philip-somozo","tag-phillippine","tag-sunstar","tag-terry-betonio","tag-tita-lacambra-ayala","tag-visual-art","tag-willy-arsena","tag-zamboanga-del-norte-federation-of-visual-artists-zanfeva","language-inggeris","writer-chris-rollo-ms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27290"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38912,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27290\/revisions\/38912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27290"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27290"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}