Bayluhanay Biennale 2025 at UPV MACH

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By John Anthony S. Estolloso

Last week, the University of the Philippines’ Museum of Art and Cultural Heritage (UPV MACH) opened its doors as venue for this year’s iteration of the Bayluhanay Bienale. Currently housing the collection of art are the museum’s Gawang Art Space and the more intimate loft of the Hanas Changing Exhibition Gallery. Composed of artworks by more than 80 artists from the regions, the exhibit is titled Sikulo at Sikleta, an hommage to the fusion of biking and the leisurely appreciation of public art, as well as a punning nod to the cycles that occur and recur in nature.

In last year’s exhibit at ILOMOCA’s Hulot Gallery, I was introduced to the premise of Bayluhanay: grounded on artistic exchange, it celebrates spaces where aesthetic interstices and repartees meet to share ideas and interpretations. That time, works from Puluy-an Art Gallery (Oton) and Eskinita Art Farm (Batangas) were featured, centering on the theme of katawhan, on corpus and consciousness, if I recall correctly.

ILOMOCA was a gated space for that exhibit; this year’s took on a more public nature. Incorporating an advocacy of sustainability through cycling – one which surfaced in the biennale’s exhibit title and notes – the artists undertook the Tour de Egai, riding through and to stopovers of galleries and cultural hubs all over the country. Iloilo City was the final chapter of the tour, and braving the sporadic showers of the day, it was perhaps on a triumphant note that December 4’s vernissage became the grand finish of that ride, something that opens more aesthetic pathways to metaphorically cycle through.

Works by Luzon artists Brian Barrios, Alfredo ‘Eski’ Esquillo, Jojo Borja, Leslie de Chavez, Norman Dreo, Reynold dela Cruz, Red Lava Salonga, Rai Cruz, Lorebert Maralita, and Shannah Orencio, among others, figured in the exhibition. Local notables represented Visayan art, with art by Alex Ordoyo, Cesar Arro, Edmar Colmo, Kinno Florentino, Kyle Francis Dile, Magaux Blas, Melvin Guirhem, Orland and Tyrone Dave Espinosa, Martin Genodepa, PG Zoluaga, Richard de la Cruz, Roland Llarena, and Ronn Bulahan, to name a few. Artworks by Mindanawon artists like Bada Langgyud, Dominic Escobar, Sam Almacen, Mai Rivera Secuban, Nicolas Aca, Oca Floirendo, and Soliman Poonon, gave a distinct regional tang to the selection. The list here is not comprehensive; still, it suffices to give us an idea of the eclectic selection of canvases and installations currently on display.

What are in their canvases and installations? Vignettes of a biker’s life. The snippets and glimpses of cycling through urban roads or country lanes. The usual sharp albeit visual badinage of political commentary and social observations. Images and figures calling for environmental action – or at least, awareness. While one might insist that these are old and much-used subjects, they are, in a sense, the aesthetic gadflies which insist to be noticed. Then again, isn’t the point of art to remind us of what we forget in our mundane familiarity of things and circumstances?

Looking closely at the artworks, one finds fresh images with old meanings. There are the constantly recurring reptilian and porcine images alluding to the blatant corruptions of our time. There are sundry portraits and postures – distorted, contorted, deconstructed, reimagined – questioning selves and personas. There are fleeting segments and portions of the human form interspersed and recalibrated with the mechanical and the artificial. There are flora and fauna, abstracted in vibrant colors like so many warning signs.

In his opening remarks, artist Alfredo Esquillo described the exhibit as ‘a silent protest to the happenings of the times.’ As such, the exchange that Bayluhanay espouses becomes a quiet yet piercing discourse and conversation of the social ills which persist incessantly and unabashedly: in the arched nave and in the low-ceilinged chamber of the museum, the political, the social, and the environmental meld into aesthetic narratives.

Visit the university’s museum and peruse Sikulo et Sikleta. Marvel at the artistry, the colors, the vibrant eclecticism of it all. Navigate through the cycles (pun intended) depicted. Then reflect on the matters that matter.

(The writer is a language and literature teacher in one of the private schools of the city. The photos are from Eskinita Art Gallery’s FB page.)