Author: Lk

  • Finding Tasing [Excerpt]

    Finding Tasing [Excerpt]

    I found Tasing when I went over the first three volumes of Purita Kalaw-Ledesma’s digitized scrapbooks, dense with news clippings and other ephemera about art. I had to physically visit the Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation Inc. (KLFI) in Makati to use their newly-fixed computer for researchers because at least here in the Philippines, the only way access…

  • Certified Copy: Ambiguous authenticities moving in time and space

    Certified Copy: Ambiguous authenticities moving in time and space

    In Abbas Kiarostami’s 2010 film Certified Copy, British author James Miller (played by William Shimell) wrote a book of the same title (i.e. Certified Copy) which has echoes of Walter Benjamin’s landmark essay on mechanical reproduction. In Miller’s words, his intention is “to try and show that the copy itself has worth in that leads…

  • Judelyn Villarta – Never Ending Joy

    Judelyn Villarta – Never Ending Joy

    January 14 – February 4, 2022Finale Art FileMakati, Metro Manila Davao-based artist Judelyn Villarta is no stranger to festivals in Mindanao. She has been an avid attendee since she was in high school, finding joy in the general atmosphere energized by people coming together to celebrate their culture through performances, costumes, and parades. Sparked by…

  • Forming Philippine Identity Behind American Lens: 1904 World’s Fair and Thereafter

    Abstract: This paper explores the effect of photography during American colonial rule in the Philippines which led to the massive popularity of the Philippine anthropological exhibition in the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Though Filipinos were already brought in to be displayed in the 1899 Greater America Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska, it received a lesser…

  • Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s “Marina (Seascape)”

    Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s “Marina (Seascape)”

    Not much has been written about “Marina (Seascape),” so I wonder where the 36-year-old Félix Resurrección Hidalgo was when he painted it in 1891. Was he painting en plein air like the impressionists in Europe? Or was he cooped up in his studio, mainly using his memories and imagination of watching the sea? I would…

  • A Love Letter to Bo Burnham: Inside

    In the spirit of the meta-commentaries in Bo Burnham: Inside, it would be acceptable to break the fourth wall and say that this is coincidentally the fourth draft (even if the second one already passed the 700-word mark) of my attempt to understand why I love Burnham’s recent Netflix special. I finally came to realization…

  • Exhibition Proposal – Puncture Map [Excerpt]

    Punctum as theme “[An] element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces” (CL26) — this was how Roland Barthes defined the concept of punctum in his book Camera Lucida: Reflections of Photography. This curatorial exhibition aims to explore the concept of studium and punctum in photographic works through…

  • Spiral Jetty and Nature: Exploration with the Greens and The 1975

    Spiral Jetty and Nature: Exploration with the Greens and The 1975

    Spiral Jetty is one of the important markers in the history of Land art (or Earth art, as it is also called). It was constructed by Robert Smithson in 1970 using rocks mostly from extinct volcanoes which he transported to an area in Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Utah. The artist unfortunately died three years…

  • Ricarte Puruganan – Pushing and riding the waves of Philippine art

    I love seascapes – from The Great Wave off Kanagawa, to Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, to Stormy Seascape. Such affinity drew me to Toilers of the Sea by Ricarte Puruganan as I randomly flipped through my copy of 100 Years of Philippine Painting. The overall Impressionistic quality of the painting and incorporation of Filipino fishermen…

  • We are not what we seem

    This was submitted for the Modern Art & Ideas course by Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Coursera.