The Slides Show: Expanding Perspectives on Art and Social Struggle

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By Noel Galon de Leon

In a world that is becoming increasingly commodified and globalized, the role of art and artistic spaces in shaping social discourse has never been more crucial. In the Philippines, where the enduring legacies of colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalist influence continue to shape public consciousness, initiatives like The Slides Show emerge as essential counterpoints. Hosted by Thrive Art Gallery in Iloilo City, The Slides Show is not just an art event; it is a platform for critical engagement, collective dialogue, and cultural reflection.

Established in December 2024, Thrive Art Gallery is a relatively young institution. Yet it has quickly emerged as a significant cultural force in the region, thanks to its consistent programming and commitment to inclusion. More than just an exhibition space, the gallery positions itself as a community hub, grounded in the principles of dialogue, collaboration, and pakikipagkápuwâ, a deeply rooted Filipino value that centers empathy and shared humanity.

On June 12, 2025, coinciding with Philippine Independence Day and Pride Month, Thrive Art Gallery held the second installment of its monthly Slides Show series under the theme Pride, Freedom, and Art. The forum featured three distinguished voices in the field of art and cultural work: Allyn Canja, Yanni Ysabel Panaguiton, and Jose “Pow” Taton, Jr. Each speaker brought a unique lens through which to examine the intersections of art, identity, and political struggle. But collectively, their insights underscored a shared understanding: that art, far from being a luxury or mere decoration, is a necessary tool for liberation, care, and truth-telling.

Curating with Care: Allyn Canja’s Practice of Ethical Stewardship

Allyn Canja’s talk, Curatorial Practice of Care, proposed a radical reimagining of the curatorial process. Drawing from community-oriented practices and indigenous values, Canja emphasized that curation must not only be intellectual or logistical, it must also be ethical and relational. For Canja, curation is a form of pangangalagà (guardianship) and pagkalingà (care), one that prioritizes human relationships over institutional display strategies.

Rejecting traditional museum frameworks that often focus on object preservation and visual spectacle, Canja calls for a curatorial practice grounded in pakikipagkápuwâ, or shared selfhood. This concept positions the curator not as a gatekeeper, but as a co-creator of meaning alongside artists, communities, and audiences. In this model, exhibitions are not just about representation, they are about relationship-building, about listening to and amplifying the lived experiences of those historically excluded from cultural narratives.

Importantly, Canja stresses that communities should be defined not merely by geographic boundaries, but by shared experiences, memories, and aspirations. She advocates for a curatorial process that reflects the full spectrum of human identity, gender, class, ethnicity, age, and that actively participates in the preservation of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. For her, curation becomes a form of collective authorship: a conscious reclaiming of memory, identity, and space.

Queer Art as Resistance: Yanni Ysabel Panaguiton and the Power of Visibility

In a talk titled Queer Art and Liberation, Yanni Ysabel Panaguiton turned attention toward the liberatory potential of queer art, particularly within the Philippine sociopolitical context. Building upon Walter Benjamin’s concept of the “aura” in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Panaguiton highlighted how art, when reproduced and circulated through digital platforms, can become divorced from its original emotional and cultural weight. This is especially relevant in a postcolonial nation like the Philippines, where dominant narratives are often filtered through colonial legacies, conservative religious values, and capitalist consumption.

Panaguiton argues that the devaluation of art in the Philippines is not incidental, it is symptomatic of a broader ideological condition. The public has been socialized to view art either as decorative or commercial, a mindset reinforced by educational institutions and mass media that privilege economic utility over cultural critique. As a result, the transformative capacity of art has been largely sidelined.

Yet, queer art defies this system. Queer artists, who exist at the margins of gender, religion, and society, are uniquely equipped to challenge normative frameworks. Their work offers not only representation but resistance. It disrupts dominant aesthetics, asserts marginalized histories, and opens up space for empathy and recognition. In a country where LGBTQIA+ lives are often erased or tokenized, queer art becomes a radical act, a reclamation of identity, dignity, and agency.

Panaguiton situates queer art not as an isolated niche but as integral to the broader Filipino struggle against oppression. It offers new ways of seeing, feeling, and imagining liberation. It is through this art that narratives of freedom, both personal and collective, begin to take shape.

Dimensions of Expression: Pow Taton and the Complexities of Artistic Freedom

In his talk, Freedom and Art: Dimensions of Expression and Artistic Freedom, Jose R. “Pow” Taton, Jr. offered a philosophical and systemic exploration of what it means to be “free” as an artist. He introduced the concept of creative frictions, the inherent tensions that arise when artists navigate between personal expression and external structures such as institutions, markets, and audiences.

Taton emphasizes that artistic freedom is not a limitless condition. Rather, it is a dynamic process shaped by the interactions between agents in the art ecosystem: creators, critics, curators, institutions, and the viewing public. Each actor plays a role in the construction of meaning, and each is subject to particular constraints. Even the art object itself, once released into the world, participates in these dialogues and negotiations.

He frames the artist as a central agent of autonomy, whose creative practice often emerges from personal and collective trauma. Yet, this autonomy is always in tension with institutional frameworks. Artists must constantly negotiate their truth against the demands of funding bodies, audience expectations, and censorship.

Drawing from Martin Heidegger’s notion of aletheia, or truth as revelation, Taton suggests that art serves as a site of disclosure. It reveals not only hidden aspects of the world but also the hidden dimensions of the self. However, such freedom cannot be ethically neutral. Questions arise: Can art be free if it harms others? Can it be liberating if it reproduces oppressive tropes? Taton challenges both artists and audiences to reconsider freedom not as the absence of limits, but as the ethical negotiation of them.

Toward a Healthier Cultural Ecosystem

What emerges from The Slides Show is a collective call for reimagining the art world as a living, breathing ecosystem, one guided not by profit or prestige, but by care, criticality, and connection. Conversations such as those hosted by Thrive Art Gallery offer a template for what art spaces can and should become: environments that foster mutual understanding, where critics, artists, and audiences can participate in shaping a more just and inclusive cultural narrative.

As Philippine society continues to wrestle with questions of identity, memory, and justice, the arts must not remain silent. It is through dialogues such as these that we begin to understand the role of art not only as a mirror to society, but as a compass, pointing us toward futures yet to be imagined.

As artist and critic John Barrios reflected in a post following the forum: Meaning is elusive. It is always between the here and there, and not exactly where. It is a becoming, and not a being. Not fact, but always an interpretation. A liminal concept, ever crossing the in-betweens. And if ever it seems that one has grasped it, it transforms into something else—a myth.

In the face of persistent erasure, commodification, and systemic injustice, the act of creating, curating, and engaging with art becomes nothing less than an act of resistance, a declaration that we are here, that we remember, and that we refuse to be silent. The Slides Show reminds us that art is not confined to frames, pedestals, or gallery walls. It lives in the conversations we risk having, the truths we dare to name, and the communities we choose to build.

In these uncertain times, where freedoms are threatened and identities are policed, we turn to art not just to survive, but to dream. We turn to dialogue not just to understand, but to transform. And we turn to each other, not as strangers in competition, but as co-authors of a more humane, more just, and more beautiful future.

Art may not give us all the answers. But it gives us the language, the courage, and the vision to keep asking better questions. And sometimes, that is where freedom begins.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and educator at University of the Philippines Visayas, where he teaches in both the Division of Professional Education and U.P. High School in Iloilo. He serves as an Executive Council Member of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Committee on Literary Arts.