All Stories

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An older Filipina in a floral dress sits among teddy bears at a flower-filled window, a lamp glowing beside her in soft painterly light

Shadows fall and I try

Grief tech, Black Mirror bots, and memories of Nanay: she murdered the English language but was Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul rolled into one.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 12, 2024
Senator Loren Legarda in a woven-trimmed black jacket stands among hanging fabric artworks and a boulder in the Philippine Pavilion

A raising of curtains: Senator Loren Legarda & the story of the PHL Pavilion in Venice

Over lunch in Venice, Senator Loren Legarda recounts how she willed the Philippines back to the Biennale after a 51-year absence.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 6, 2024
The Bistro Group executives Lisa Ronquillo-Along and Divine Peralta smiling in front of a brightly lit modern restaurant interior

A night of dragon potions and Red Lotus eaters

A dinner of Sichuan Sour and Shanghai Spritz becomes a night of wild print-industry tales, at a resto-bar built for lowering your defenses.

By Igan D'Bayan · April 21, 2024
Cecile Licad, in a black gown, raises joined hands with the conductor at curtain call before the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra

Cecile Licad on concert memories and the loss of a soulmate

It was an emotional moment for Anton Huang when Licad dedicated the Schumann-Liszt piece to Nedy Tantoco. ‘Sad that it was actually my mom’s last concert.’

By Igan D'Bayan · March 24, 2024
Patrick Sim in a blue suit gestures toward a lavish dessert table of cakes, teapots and flowers, beneath a terracotta wall with birdcage lamps and neon script reading “A party without cake is just a meeting.”

Savoring secrecy at Secret Recipe

A Malaysian cafe built on one marble cheesecake returns to Manila, where laksa and rendang share a menu with Irish lamb shanks and tom yum

By Igan D'Bayan · March 14, 2024
Bartenders in black mix cocktails behind a bar lined with martini glasses, a wall of shochu and sake bottles glowing behind them

Communing with Japanese spirits

Not guzzling but communing: an evening of Kagoshima sweet potato and barley shochu, four cocktails and folklore at a Bonifacio Global City izakaya

By Igan D'Bayan · February 15, 2024
Andreea Medar stands among glowing wire plants in a room bathed in ultraviolet blue light

Andreea Medar’s love letter to a lost village

Andreea Medar connects those drawn to the ghostly, the abandoned and the disappearing with all the lonely voids where love used to be.

By Igan D'Bayan · February 12, 2024
Gallery view of the Tropical exhibition, paintings hung on glass panels above a wooden floor

Tropic of wonder

Kahlo and Rivera hung as part of a region rather than a greatest-hits parade: Tropical at the National Gallery Singapore, 200 works deep.

By Igan D'Bayan · January 27, 2024
Australian Ambassador HK Yu, Senator Loren Legarda and Karen Davila stand together on the UN Women stage before a collage of program photos, a Philippine flag at left

Karen Davila: ‘I live my own empowered woman story and I know every Filipina has hers’

From the floodwaters of Real, Quezon to UN Women National Goodwill Ambassador. The only way to know what is on the ground is to be on the ground.

By Igan D'Bayan · January 24, 2024
Small glowing video screens filling a dark gallery wall beside sculpted 3D face fragments at the Singapore Art Museum

I am therefore AI: Personhood probed in Singapore Art Museum show

Imagine a blackish mirror reflecting a sky-net of electric sheep playing an imitation game soundtracked by Alphaville’s Forever Young.

By Igan D'Bayan · January 8, 2024
Visitors sit and stand among angular bamboo lattice frames forming a tunnel-like installation in a raw brick-walled hall of the Venice Arsenale

PHL Pavilion holds roundtable discussion: A journey through the arteries of cities & ideas

Manila was once called the Venice of the East. A roundtable on estuaries and esteros closes the Philippine Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale.

By Igan D'Bayan · December 23, 2023
Salman Rushdie in a dark suit on a stage sofa during an onstage talk, a red dotted backdrop behind him

Salman Rushdie at 75th Frankfurt Buchmesse: ‘It’s even more important to create beauty in a time of ugliness’

A year after the stabbing, Rushdie takes the Peace Prize in Frankfurt and talks about putting fear in a little box in the corner of the room.

By Igan D'Bayan · December 16, 2023