Silverlens Launches Ephemeral Art Residency in Philippines

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Manila-based gallery SILVERLENS has announced the first six artists who will produce sustainable artworks using materials found on Kopiat Island.

Artists will exclusively use materials from the island, such as bamboo, driftwood, and washed up debris, to create their carbon neutral sculptural installations. The artworks are envisioned to be ephemeral, gradually being reclaimed by nature.

Artists chosen for the inaugural Lubi Art Residency include the Philippines’ Corinne de San Jose, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Wawi Navarroza, Christina Quisumbing Ramilo, and Bernardo Pacquing. (Lubi is the Visayan term for coconut.)

Each artist was chosen for their practices of working with found materials, Silverlens co-owners Isa Lorenzo and Rachel Rillo told Ocula Magazine.

Pacquing, for example, uses wood reclaimed from to-be-demolished houses in his sculptures, while Corinne de San Jose has made giant wind whistles from carved bamboo.

They are joined by New York artist James Clar who predominantly works with light and technology-based media. Clar will be able to draw power sustainably from the island’s solar farm, or the artist might make work that plays with the island’s existing light systems, Lorenzo and Rillo said.

The Lubi Art Residency is being run in collaboration with the owners of the Dusit Thani Lubi Plantation Resort, Lanang Realty Development Corporation, who took over the island in the 1990s.

Lorenzo used to visit Kopiat Island in the 1990s before there was any infrastructure at all.

‘We saw it at its most virgin, and now we want to give back to it by having artists come and make work using what she has to offer,’ said Lorenzo and Rillo.

The island residency concept was inspired by a visit to the Seto Uchi Treinnale Lorenzo took in 2009.

‘The audience is intended to be not just art audiences, but local Filipino audiences, as the Seto Uchi Triennale audiences are primarily Japanese families,’ they said.

New artworks produced during the first residency cycle are expected to be completed by the end of 2023, and installed across the island’s public spaces by March 2024. —[O]

Main image: Dusit Thani Lubi Plantation Resort, Kopiat Island, Mabini, Province of Davao de Oro, Philippines. Courtesy Neli Go and SILVERLENS.