entrance to exhibition

Manila Envelope featured work by Poklong Anading, Poi Beltran, MM Yu, Jayson Oliveria, Yason Banal, Lena Cobangbang, Louie Cordero, Gerardo Tan, Denis Lagdameo, Carlos Celdran, Bembol De La Cruz, Gary-Ross Pastrana and Norberto Roldan. It was the first of several Philippines arts exchange shows I’ve found myself organizing: another is ”Galleon Trade,” which brought a number of California-based artists back to Manila in July 2007.

Metro Manila is a magnificent sprawl of a city. It has some of the liveliest cultural life I’ve ever experienced, and with the advent of a growing number of artist-run experimental spaces, the creative community is in higher profile than ever. Contemporary visual culture there has become more of a rolling party in the past few years than I’ve ever seen it before. While there have always been galleries and cultural venues throughout the Philippines, something new has been developing in terms of a lively, independent, sustainable artist-run community that bears some attention. Manila Envelope was a snapshot of some of the new experimental art being generated there, and also provided some background and context about Metro Manila’s arts communities. (There are a number of URLs for these spaces and organizations in LINKS, as well as images in PHOTOS.)

The 2006 Berkeley exhibition and its accompanying research were the result of a UC Pacific Rim Research Program travel grant.

Manila Envelope also traveled to Honolulu's thirtynine hotel in 2007.