Can you tell us how your curatorship for the Philippine Pavilion came about?

Under Senator Loren Legarda’s Office and the Department of Foreign Affairs, along with the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts being the official commissioner for this year’s entry, 13 different interested curators sent their respective proposals in response to the open call. [For us] the most pressing issue is about the architectural and cultural identity of a country like ours. So we thought it was the most fitting to be the main topic for our narrative. I even remember we were the 13th to present, we were the last one, and eventually we were awarded to be the curators for the event.

Our narrative is entitled MUHON: Traces of an adolescent city. It revolves around the idea of presenting cultural and heritage monuments or markers, also known as Muhon, in Manila and their conditions throughout history. We thought that Manila as an adolescent city is struggling for its own identity. After being colonized and influenced by different countries for a long time, we quite don’t know who we really are. In also comes the problem of disregard to historical sites that are torn down which says so much of our heritage. There is also the question of “Where are we going in the future?” and we thought that is a very important issue that we are facing now.

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How are the Muhons presented in the Philippine Pavilion?

To begin, we did a mock-up in the University of the Philippines to further study the narrative that we want and how we can present the Muhons. We replicated the exhibition space and made sure the construction was as close as possible to the real location that we have. Where the Philippine Pavilion now is located, the story flows within three rooms of 150sqm. There are nine cultural markers in each room being reinterpreted in three ways: History (original state), Modernity (present condition), and Conjecture (projected future), for a total of 27 Muhons.

The first room which stands for History is a black painted room with lighting directly above the Muhon. The presentation is somewhat romanticized: high contrast with soft pin lights. There is a pragmatic grid flooring pattern which represents a utopian sense of order.

The second room, called Modernity is a gray room with mirror-paneled walls to create an infinity effect. The grid floor pattern is interrupted by diagonal incisive lines which further add to the sense of chaos in the narrative of the space.

The last room is Conjecture, a bright room—white walls with Carrara marble flooring. The rooms suggest an open-ended feel to the story line. Because of the design of the three rooms, in the end you feel that there is a flow, a story, and a progression of emotion.

So the rooms are named History, Modernity and Conjecture. But why Conjecture instead of Future?

As Senator Legarda explained during the Vernissage, Conjecture suggests an open-ended possibility―there is room for participation. The progression is in your hands and there is space for involvement as opposed to the term future which can connote a certain sense of imposition—that something is dictated and foreseen already.

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