Angela Silva invites viewers to look closer in new exhibition at Alliance Française de Manille

1 of 5

At Alliance Française de Manille, Angela Silva asks a simple but disarming set of questions: Who were these people? Where were these taken? What were they doing?

Opening March 12, 2026 at 6:30 PM and running until April 11, 2026, Silva’s presentation, Blue Traces of Time, anchors a two-person exhibition with Francis Dravigny.

Angela Silva is a mixed media artist and printmaker based in Talisay, Negros Occidental.

Also a leading cyanotype artist, Silva works with vintage photographs and real photo postcards from the early 1900s to the 1940s.

She lifts these images from obscurity and repositions them within cyanotype compositions layered with fragments of text.

Stripped of their original captions and contexts, the figures stare back at us across time.

Silva does not supply answers.

Instead, she invites viewers to slow down, step closer, and confront the mystery embedded in each face.

Through the deep indigo field of the cyanotype process, memory becomes tactile and immediate.

What survives when context disappears?

What stories remain in a gesture, a glance, a faded backdrop?

Opening alongside her is Francis Dravigny’s Everything Can Be Woven.

The Cebu artist and designer builds sculptural installations that merge Philippine abacá textiles with found industrial materials.

He constructs vertical forms using discarded resin, painted loom spools, and stacked Asian eating bowls, transforming everyday vessels into striking architectural presences.

Dravigny emphasizes process through weaving and assemblage, structure, and the physical labor embedded in material culture.

Together in Woven Traces, Silva and Dravigny demonstrate how artists can reshape memory and matter through deliberate acts of recovery and reinvention.

Their works shift attention from what has been cast aside to what can still be built, preserved, and reimagined.

An artist talk and cyanotype workshop with Angela Silva will take place in April at Alliance Française de Manille. Details will be announced.

The public is invited to the opening reception on March 12 at 6:30 PM.

Admission is free.

For inquiries, contact Alliance Française de Manille at info@alliance.ph at Facebook www.facebook.com/alliancefrancaisedemanille and Instagram www.instagram.com/afmanille/