Kalendaryo 20/20 is not your typical yearender exhibit

Rappler.com

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Kalendaryo 20/20 is not your typical yearender exhibit
PRESS RELEASE: Artist and University of the Philippines Fine Arts professor Marco Ruben Malto II reconstructs the Filipino calendar to represent how the unfortunate events of our past are recurring today and rapidly shaping our future

This is a press release from Marco Malto’s exhibit.

“How did we come to this?”

Like-minded netizens these days often ask this of their social media followers – each one seemingly seeking solutions, yet none is forthcoming. With the goings-on getting more anomalous by the day, and the crucial personalities acting too peculiar it cannot be normal, many are shaking their heads in disbelief and constantly demanding answers.

In Kalendaryo 20/20, artist and University of the Philippines Fine Arts professor Marco Ruben Malto II reconstructs the Filipino calendar to represent how the unfortunate events of our past are recurring today and rapidly shaping our future. By using the calendar as a central motif in his latest solo exhibition, Malto wants to alert us, yet again, to some of the critical issues facing our nation.  

“What’s so important about keeping track of time?” Distinguished essayist and fiction writer Mario Miclat explicates the role of the calendar in helping us remember the past, appreciate the present, and plan for the future. As he narrates the history of the Filipino calendar in Filway’s Philippine Almanac of 1991, the accomplished author asks: “If there were no calendar, how would Filipinos remember Rizal or the Revolution? How would June 12 or even August 21 be recorded? And how would the country appreciate the long process of building a nation?”

In recent years, Malto’s solo exhibits – Bayang Magiting (2013), Siete Estaciones (2014), Ang Petroglyphs ng Angono (2015), Susmaryosep! (2016), Peksman! (2017), and Kahimanawari (2018) – embodied themes capturing the country’s current crucial concerns and how they interplay with history and the nuances of the Filipino culture. The professor in the artist constantly aspires to educate by engaging his public in important national discourses – using his works to characterize and to comment on the socio-political conditions of the present, while remembering history and drawing on cultural references from thematic beliefs and practices that are distinctly Filipino.

Wading through the country’s calendar of celebrations, crises, and catastrophes, Malto’s Kalendaryo 20/20 wants us to remember so that we can see clearly what is ahead of us before it is too late.  Kalendaryo 20/20 opens Friday, November 22, 5 pm at Gallery 2, Art & Design West Hall, UP Diliman College of Fine Arts. The exhibit runs until December 6, 2019. Gallery hours are from 9 am to 5 pm, Mondays to Saturdays. – Rappler.com

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