All Stories

Everything we've published, newest first.

Christina Dy in a cropped top and wide black pleated trousers, one arm raised to a dance pole in a white studio

Christina Dy draws the dance of the untraceable

Bone spurs, grafted cacti and a dancer’s aging body: Christina Dy goes back to charcoal on paper for “Chimera: New Drawings” at The Crucible.

By Igan D'Bayan · September 20, 2026
Michelline Syjuco in a black long-sleeved top, arms crossed, wearing a gold and crystal statement cuff

Michelline Syjuco and the strange afterlives of things

Rusted sheet metal, railway timber, bullet casings, wingless angels: Michelline Syjuco welds the discarded into talismans you can wear.

By Igan D'Bayan · September 4, 2026
Katya Angara in a red dress and red feather earrings, arms spread before her Sorceress assemblage at The Crucible Gallery, the show’s gothic logotype across the frame

Katya Angara: Sorceress supreme

Books, gardens and gothic reveries: inside Katya Angara’s “Sorceress” at The Crucible Gallery, where materials take on lives of their own.

By Igan D'Bayan · August 28, 2026
Maria Tan standing beside a large botanical painting layered with teal dots, peach light and clusters of dandelion-like forms

Maria Tan: Late nights, household objects, and the inextinguishable light of art

Maria conjures vast imaginary spaces using spoons, forks, combs, toothbrushes and beauty blenders, alongside conventional paintbrushes.

By Igan D'Bayan · August 23, 2026
A Lucerne Luxe magazine issue featuring a blue dial watch on the cover, surrounded by white canvas tote bags printed with Lucerne Watch Week and a pair of white watchmaker handling gloves resting on top

Manila is the place & Time is the story

Luxury watchmaking was never really about telling time. Lucerne Watch Week brings 16 watchmakers from Switzerland, Germany and Japan to the Ayala Museum.

By Igan D'Bayan · August 4, 2026
Dark still life of a long haired writer with VU meters for eyes and a cassette taped over his mouth, holding a poodle in a REKORDR t-shirt among an Underwood typewriter, Steely Dan LPs and stacked archives of his newspaper years

Collected Irritations

A reader once wished my essays were collected in one book so she could hate everything in one place. Her wish is my command.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 28, 2026
Surrealist Boschian artwork depicting Igan D’Bayan interviewing Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Salman Rushdie, and David Medalla at a round table surrounded by fantastical floating structures

Why I Am Not A Normal Writer

As the paper I write for marks its 40th anniversary, it seems only fitting to look back at some of the highlights from this gloriously bonkers career.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 27, 2026
The IKEA store in Älmhult, Sweden on a rainy night, seen through a rain-beaded car window, the Home of Ingvar Kamprad sign glowing over wet pavement

Eye-catching today, iconic tomorrow: Inside the Ikea PS 2026 Collection

Three days in Älmhult, where a foldable chair hangs like art, a bench rocks like Oktoberfest, and a chair you sit on turns out to be air.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 2, 2026
Visitors gaze up at the towering “Detritus” triptych, a wall-sized graphite field of drawn rubble, bones and relief objects, in the dock hall

From Malabon to Venezia: Ronald Ventura mounts collateral show at 61st Venice Art Biennale

Four in the morning in Malabon in the Nineties, sopas at Connie’s, and a father who recognises his own town inside a drawing of Venice.

By Igan D'Bayan · June 15, 2026
Ronald Ventura in his studio steadying a monumental winged male figure sculpture, a coiled woven form and shelves of casts behind

Malabon artist sets sail for Venice

Ronald Ventura transforms boat-body sculptures and lunar motifs into a meditation on water, survival, and the fragile ties between two cities.

By Igan D'Bayan · March 16, 2026
Wide shot of Somatosonic performing Totality 1.0 under blue stage lights: Christina Dy hanging upside-down on a pole, Tad Ermitaño at the electronics table, and Marco Ortiga bowing the Tungkod

‘Something sexy… happening in the Apocalypse’

Somatosonic’s performance wove together technology, sound, pole dance, audio-kinetic sculptures, live visuals, and a darkly brewing storm of sounds.

By Igan D'Bayan · December 6, 2025
Doktor Karayom’s book Ang Dalubkatawan ng Aking Paglalakbay, its crimson two-headed figure on the cover, beside a carved serpent and crates of vinyl records

Pula ang Kulay ng Katapusan

Bakit pula? A foreword to Doktor Karayom’s book of raw, anatomical musings, drawn somewhere between bangungot and alaala.

By Igan D'Bayan · December 4, 2025