March 7, 2025
MANILA – As March rolls in, so do the celebrations and conversations of Women’s History Month. With this comes a growing platform for the conceptual explorations of Filipina artists—a talented force spanning diverse mediums, styles, and exhibition spaces.
Beyond all-women exhibits, numerous standout shows are currently running across the country. At West Gallery, Patrick de Veyra presents gestural works that blend printed material with hand-applied paint and emulsion. In an Instagram post, he describes his pieces as carrying “the atmosphere and quality of water in motion… reflections on the hyperstimulation we encounter today.”
At Silverlens Manila is an important show by Norberto Roldan titled, “No Winter Lasts Forever.” Running until mid-March, the exhibit of the acclaimed contemporary artist showcases his works created during his time in Berlin starting in 2024, incorporating found objects from flea markets, which he reimagines in his particular artistic language.
Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Museum of Manila recently unveiled “Timeless: J. Moreno” last Feb. 27—a special exhibition dedicated to pioneering Filipino fashion designer Pitoy Moreno. Curated by Dr. Florina H. Capistrano-Baker, the exhibit highlights his reinventions of the Maria Clara gown, his couture creations, and his experiments with diverse textiles—from jusi and piña to Japanese brocades. Also featured are dresses worn by notable figures in Philippine history, including the tiny wedding gown of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and images of Rita Moreno’s Pitoy Moreno-designed dress from her historic Oscar win in 1962.
Modeka Creative Space is also set to mount an anticipated all-women group exhibition, curated by Stephanie Frondoso, promising a compelling exploration of the female perspective.
Amid these varied showcases of Philippine art, we harken back to Filipina artists and the statements they make.
From exhibits on printmaking intersecting with female-made literature to exhibitions that show certain female artists’ extensive body of work, these next exhibitions are displays of the depth, diversity, and dynamism of Philippine art—demonstrating that Filipina artists are making noise now more than ever and, as a collective, are steadily growing the reach of female artists and amplifying numerous voices of spirited individuals.
1. Isabel Santos, “Again and Again, Until You Believe It” at Blanc Gallery
It’s always exciting to see the unmistakable visual languages of Isabel Santos. In the group exhibition with her family at Silverlens Manila last year, Santos shared that the work she exhibited had two methods of process—one “‘methodical and deliberate,’ the other, ‘intimate, visceral.’”
For her latest exhibition at Blanc Gallery, “Again and Again, Until You Believe It,” Santos chooses a process that reflects on repetition—a repetition that in turn reflects the artist’s own self-conviction, which steers changes in her own life.
The title itself has been with her for two years, scrawled onto a whiteboard in her room. “I don’t quite remember the original thought why I wrote this down,” she admits. “It changed over time or it became more vague, but I know it was something about me wanting to change something—or believe in something I do not believe.”
“Maybe that’s how I convince myself or how I learn certain things and habits. How I am able to have significant changes in my life,” she reflects. The show raises questions about process versus outcome, whether it is movement or a fixed goal, or if centered on the process or the pieces.
“I am working towards the goal. My hope is that I eventually have behaviors that benefit me to become the artist that I want to be… or these behaviors make me an artist, believing I am an artist… For me, it’s until you believe it, until it is true,” says the artist.
“Again and Again Until You Believe It” runs from Mar. 8 to 29, 2025 at Blanc Gallery, 145 Katipunan Ave., Quezon City
2. Valerie Chua, “Pretty Pointless Things” at West Gallery
Valerie Chua continues to enchant with her delicate and nuanced aesthetic, as she presents a new pastel-colored collection of paintings that blurs the lines between the mundane and the extraordinary.
“Pretty Pointless Things” explores our society’s rapid consumption of digital content and the fleeting nature of what she calls “our contemporary vibe culture.” She applies a pastel filter to ordinary objects like a fish and plastic bags to reflect how people present curated versions of their lives through digital filters.
Through this, Chua critiques how we consume content quickly without absorbing it meaningfully and comments on the commodification of images in social media. Her process involves intentionally flattening images by reducing shadows to create a stylized aesthetic that mirrors the way we experience digital content.
“Pretty Pointless Things” runs from Feb. 29 to Mar. 29, 2025 at West Gallery, 48, 1104 West Ave, Quezon City
3. Lui Gonzales, “A Tree Is A Seed As It Falls” at Kaida Contemporary Gallery
Besides being a singer and songwriter, Lui Gonzales is a visual artist who meticulously crafts intricate worlds on paper, but not in the way you might expect.
She layers tracing paper, often up to five sheets, and draws on them with a pen, occasionally depicting people or objects. Once her composition is complete, she tears the tracing paper, creating delicate edges that add movement and depth, both fragile and rich.
For her latest solo exhibition, the artist incorporates “images of personal belongings with outdoor sceneries… a survey of her immediate surroundings—exteriors of houses, musical instruments, bottles of drinks, home decor,” Gonzales writes in an Instagram post, “which all suggest the passage of time.”
But in Gonzales’ iteration, time melds together through her pen and tracing paper, making the past, present, and future indistinguishable from each other.
“A Tree Is A Seed As It Falls” runs from Mar. 2 to 21, 2025 at Kaida Contemporary Gallery, 45 Scout Madriñan St, Diliman, Quezon City
4. All-women group exhibition at Galerie Stephanie in Art Fair Tokyo 2025
Lately, more and more artists from the Philippines have been exhibiting on the global stage. For Art Fair Tokyo happening this weekend, Galerie Stephanie, the only Filipino exhibitor at the fair, is presenting an all-women exhibition of Filipina artists for their booth.
The curation features young female artists, all under 30, such as Kim Borja and her wide-eyed, childlike, somewhat melancholic figures. Through landscapes, Jem Magbanua presents visual explorations of place with her distinct aesthetic. Meanwhile Naburok fuses digital and traditional media, with paintings that show a world built by geometric shapes and imagination. Thea Quiachon creates introspective works that verge on abstract expressionism, with figures on grids that ultimately connect through their placements and movements.
Kim Borja, Naburok, Jem Magbanua, and Thea Quiachon’s exhibition runs from Mar. 7 to 9, 2025 at Galerie Stephanie, Booth L015 at Art Fair Tokyo, Tokyo International Forum, 3 Chome-5-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda City, Tokyo 100-0005, Japan
5. Maria Taniguchi, “Maria Taniguchi: Body of Work” at the MCAD
Late last 2024, Benilde’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) launched Maria Taniguchi’s first survey exhibition. Taniguchi is known for her distinctive monochromatic paintings resembling the repetitive structure of brick patterns, which delve into explorations of systems, surface, scale, and time.
The survey features Taniguchi’s extensive practice with the series of “brick paintings” that the artist began in 2008. Since then, this body of work has grown into nearly 200 iterations of paintings, thus the titular exhibition name.
Though originally trained as a sculptor, Taniguchi investigates materiality through her conceptual approach to painting, blurring the boundaries between mediums and various schemas of space.
“Maria Taniguchi: Body of Work” runs from Dec. 14, 2024 to Mar. 30, 2025 at the MCAD, Ground Floor, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Design and Arts Campus (D+A Campus), Dominga Street, Malate, Manila
6. Chris Ramos, “An Artventure” at RiseSpace Art Gallery
For her first solo show, Chris Ramos presents 63 artworks in seven phases, each exploring a unique theme and medium.
The first pays homage to Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” using modeling clay, colored sand, glitter glue, paper, oil pastels, metallic pans, and more. She then shifts to “The Girl With Many Phases,” exploring variations of hair portraits in a multi-colored scope. A Beatles tribute follows, featuring yellow submarines and octopuses in underwater gardens, as well as another phase of seascapes that capture the ocean’s vastness and life through textures made by modeling and crackling pastes, glass beads and granular gels, black lava, pumice, and iridescent mediums.
Having co-founded “Pink Positive,” an art campaign for Leni Robredo, she dedicates the fifth phase to women’s empowerment while the sixth phase introduces miniatures in collaboration with doorstoppers and candleholders from Resurrection Furniture and Found Objects Gallery. In time with Women’s Month, Ramos’ last phase boldly presents painted vulvas—challenging patriarchy and celebrating body positivity as well as the identity of the self.
“An Artventure: 2015-2025” runs from Mar. 8 to 22, 2025 at RiseSpace Art Gallery, 2nd floor, unit 4, Comuna Bldg. A, 238 Pablo Ocampo Sr. Ext., Makati
7. Group exhibition, “Creative Non-Fiction” at Everything’s Fine
Printmaking artists France Daffon, known for her signature blue anino figures, and Angela Silva, an esteemed printmaker and cyanotype artist from Negros, come together in collaboration with the Hanan Initiative, a local collective of women printmakers.
Spanning generations, the partnership includes 15 other female printmakers, culminating in work all created by women, as they respond to the contemporary Filipina literature of Katrina Stuart Santiago (“Of Love and Other Lemons”) and Zea Asis (“Strange Intimacies”).
“Creative Non-Fiction” runs from Mar. 8 at Everything’s Fine, Unit G8, Prince Tower, Salcedo Village, 14 Tordesillas, Makati
8. Kim Lim, “Teeth and Tenderness” at Tang Contemporary Art Bangkok
Kim Lim’s “Teeth and Tenderness” at Tang Contemporary Bangkok is a striking exploration of the duality a woman carries. In an Instagram post, the Filipina artist describes this duality of women as, “Strength and softness. Wildness and warmth. The untamed and the nurturing… Their bite and their balm.”
Through her work, the artist aims to capture the quiet strength, mixed with the raw resilience of women, honoring the females’ capacity to fight and heal.
Besides being an interior designer, entrepreneur, and NGO worker, Lim is also an advocate of arts education through healing, as a teacher who empowers women in jail through art and expression at the Kapit Kulay Foundation.