Powers That Be is a group exhibition featuring Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, Yason Banal, Gaston Damag, Roberto Feleo, Riel Hilario, Kat Medina, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, John Frank Sabado and Mark Salvatus. These works are gathered to develop an overview of conditions surrounding notions of the sovereign. The artists from the Philippines recognize the sovereign’s contemporary forms. In effect, they problematize how we navigate through neocolonialism, peculiar systems of particular cultures vis-à-vis consumerist realities, history’s debris in a cosmopolitan world and the shadows of power.

Among other subjects, the artists in Powers That Be also touch upon ecology and industrial waste from the perspective of the Mountain Regions, urban territories, (re)presentations of indigenous Filipino culture and the diaspora across the country’s colonial history.

-The Drawing Room Contemporary Art 

Image: © John Frank Sabado
Kalinga Woman
2011