Sigwada Gallery’s initial salvo for 2009 opens on January 10 at 6pm and runs through January 31, 2009. Cocktails will be served as the exhibit closes at 6pm onwards.
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Kontra-Kontra
tad pagaduan
igé trinidad
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As antagonist’s anthem dethrones the radiant sunrise of modern mornings, we caress a conscious violator to those who actively thrive on agitating stories, corrupting honor and punctuating imaginary scandals in everything, by which they would naturally expect themselves hailed upon as contemporary gods on their deliberate declaration of distaste and division among societies. Flaw-fetishes devoted in exposing errors for them to heroically put out.
Pseudo heroes, pseudo paradise
The land of empty angst: underneath our nuclear bomb.
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However, since we’re crowned and shall always be crowned with self-perceptions, one might merely scoff and insist that such torments are crucial to crucify humanity onto rightful definition; that there is indeed an error somewhere in a system of supposed perfection.
In this case, the show itself, being the anti-torment testimonial that it is, is labeled the torment, fueled by the logic of a notion whereby firing a gun to the gunman who ought not to live, we ought not to live for we mutated into gunmen ourselves by taking the immediate sweetness and benefit of the bullet, the apparatus of notoriety that was opposed as implied. The hero therefore became the villain. Gandhi became Hitler, and most likely, vice versa.
Putting paradox for a face, the show devastates itself with societal armageddon, a conception misconceptualized by another conception; a showdown of ethical beliefs and ethical beliefs; Utopia versus Utopia.
Undressing the theme to a naked, simpler thought bubble, the meaning is simply given, protruding, candidly self-explanatory to naked ear; functional, waxed or deaf; Kontra-Kontra is contradiction against contradiction, against contradicting against, serving with hostile helloes a visual supper of erected middle-fingers for erected middle-fingers.
Finger-lickin’ antagonisms,
the various shadows of salvation, the motivation
of the schism.
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Venue Map:
Sigwada Gallery
Gallery hours (Monday-Sunday, 10am-6pm - beyond 6pm by appointment)
0917-8075659 • 743-5873
1921 Oroquieta St., cor. Tayuman, Sta. Cruz, Manila
Tagged: art, exhibit, Ige Trinidad, Sigwada Gallery, Tad Pagaduan December 30, 2008
I love my country. Even if there are many unpleasant things about it. Especially now.
The more I read history, the more I find out about political and extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, the more I am inclined to want to use whatever skills I have (in art and in my particular field in social science) to help bring about justice for the victims.
Tads, a classmate and friend of mine who died two months ago in a mountaineering accident (during a very bad typhoon), was supposed to be part of the forensic team that would help identify the victims (buried in remote areas) of the killings. Other than being a great mountaineer who can read the terrain and help set up camp, he was also a great anthropologist in the making. As part of the team he was going to be our visual guy, the one who took photos and sketched out faces to be identified. He was to be our forensic artist. Now that he’s gone we’re one powerhouse less.
Today I saw a small exhibit on the death of one of our country’s heroes, Ninoy Aquino. I felt myself clenching my fists, at everything that caused it, and I remembered all the injustices not only in my country, but in the rest of the world. This was the social me talking. And I felt like doing something.
That experience today made me seriously contemplate (finally) being part of that forensic team. While I may not be able to take Tads’ place as the visual expert, I can however take (okay) photographs. I can sleep anywhere. I’m not finicky about food. I can carry a conversation well. I ask. I’m not afraid of dead bodies and skeletal remains. No, I am not afraid. And neither should you be.
The ones we should fear are alive: those holding the guns, those who are capable of ruthless murder using whatever means, and the people who deny justice to those who deserve it.
So I say FIGHT.
September 20, 2008
saturday, i attended the soft opening of SIGWADA GALLERY. i’ll be writing about that in a bit.
sunday. i went with susa to the manila international book fair at the sm mall of asia. i showed her my mom’s book on IMCI (buy it, wannabe nurses, BUY IT!) published by C & E. lotsa lotsa books, but sadly–and susa and i both agreed–the prices of some books were still too high. while she looked over at the psychology shelves, i busied myself with anthropology and culture, until i ventured over to some ‘international’ pub houses, and got myself a book that cost (blimey) eight pounds (times seventy pesos as the discount price). it is a book on NUMBERS.
yeah yeah, i hate math. but i love facts (useful or not), and numbers, words, events, whatever. numbers have stories. like, for example, this bit on my birthday number FOUR: lots of famous fours like the Four Horsemen, the Fab Four, 4/4 time, four apostles, Journalism is the Fourth Estate, among other stuff i’m too lazy to rave about just now. anyway. made my point, i bought a book about numbers (Arcturus Publishing–”arch to arcturus, head on to orion,” says that constellation reminder/memory device).
before i met up with susa i was itching to buy a new notebook and a pen with which to make lists. every now and then i would have the impulse to scribble something, and susa was kind enough to heed my whining. she accompanied me to the stationery section (this was still in sm san lazaro, before lunch at Jonas and the reunion with Ting–TING!!!–who was so detached from everything he didn’t know what happened to Tads). new notebook, yey! i proceeded to do my ‘me time’ and so i made lists on music i like, my favorite films, shows, songs, things in the world, what i want to achieve by the time i’m thirty, pet peeves, the autograph book stuff. it was fun, really. now i can revive my friendster profile. hahaha.
the best part of the day? hot chocolate at chocolat.
sample list, just to give you an idea:
*THIS IS SO ME! (random, i think i listed down some 100 words/phrases here)*
- taking photos
- old houses
- greens
- water
- heights
- rain
- white cotton shirts
- secret compartments
- flowers…in a pot
- strawberry ice cream
- constellations
- carrots
- Quiapo
- parks
- genealogy
- letters
- pets
- fun facts
- champorado
- malong
- photographs
- notebooks
- maps
- rollercoasters
- knots
et cetera. as for the ’stuff to be accomplished by the time i’m thirty’, well, it was pretty difficult writing them down. secret muna. hahaha. okay, i included the “doing Ph.D.” here as well as “Batanes” and “Cook well” so it’s very…flexible. 
anyway. i like lists. and word associations.
susa called me a geek when i said i could enumerate the 22 bones in the human skull (22 is susa’s birth day number, we were browsing my new book). no i said, it’s something we all learned in physical anthropology. “you’re still a geek,” she said. sige na, geek na kung geek. i have pet rats too.
September 14, 2008
Continue Reading August 11, 2007
Continue Reading February 7, 2007
Continue Reading January 27, 2007
