Ode To Art presents our inaugural Philippines group exhibition featuring the works of MM Yu, Victor Balanon, Nona Garcia, Louie Cordero, Jacob Lindo, Paul Mondok, Luis Santos, Gary Ross Pastrana, Maria Jeona Zoleta, Mark Andy Garcia, Robert Langenegger, Cocoy Lumbao and Ryan Villamael.

What if, while in Singapore, we turn our eyes around, our pupils to the backs of our sockets; where would we be? Would it Manila and its hodgepodge urban landscape that we see? Peering through a looking glass in Manila, would we find ourselves in Singapore, the city of gardens that Manila could have been, nuestro perdido eden – our lost Eden? In 1896, Philippine national hero – physician and poet José Rizal of mixed indigenous Filipino and Chinese, as well as Spanish and Japanes ancestry – bid his final farewell before his execution with an untitled poem written in Spanish and hidden in a cocinilla or small alcohol stove to be smuggled out of prison. Later named "Mi último adiós" (My Last Farewell), the words nuestro perdido Eden (our Eden lost) in the first stanza imagine an originary homeland that one yearns to recover, a utopia that has been lost. This is a group show of 13 emerging Philippine artists based in Metro Manila. They point towards and map something beyond to be accessed that is vast and myraid, connecting the here with the there or the elsewhere. The exhibition's intention is to go beyond nationalistic representation of artists' perspectives to weave together a necessarily uneven yet complex narrative of country and homeland. And perhaps by looking through the mirror, we would recognise ourselves through how others see.

**The exhibition will begin at 7pm.

Image: © Paul Mondok, Ode To Art