In commemoration of Andres Bonifacio’s 150th anniversary, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) proudly hosts the exhibition ‘Tinubuang Lupa” by Alwin Reamillo. The exhibition uses historical records, oral accounts, residual imagery, and popular beliefs in treading the contentious ground of the revolutionary leader’s legacy. Using soil, devotional paraphernalia, and popular imagery, Reamillo plots the shifting terrain in which the vital yield of struggle, revolution, betrayal, heroism, and legend germinates.
Alwin Reamillo was born in Manila, Philippines in 1964. He studied painting at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, and began his career as a visual art teacher at the Philippine High School for the Arts. He is based in Fremantle, Australia and the Philippines; Reamillo is one of Asia’s foremost artists. He has exhibited with the grandmaster of Russian art Ilya Kabakov and the young Cuban art-star Kcho, and has been in major international shows, including the Biennale of Venice and Havana and Traditions /Tensions in New York. For the period 1993-1999 much of his work was made with his long-term collaborator Juliet Lea under the name Reamillo + Juliet. Coming back from Australia in 2007 he exhibited the collaborative projects, The Mang Emo + Mag-himo Grand Piano Projects at Galleria Duemila and the Cultural Center of the Philippines. That culminated in a grand piano concert by Ingrid Sala Santamaria.
His practice has an improvisational and experimental approach that intersects between mixed media, painting, sculpture, installation, shadow puppetry and performance that often makes use of found and sought materials.
‘Tinubuang Lupa’ opens on December 12, 2013 at the NCCA gallery in Intramuros. The exhibition runs until January 25, 2014.
Cover: Nikita McElroy
