The Culture Desk

Lifestyle

On doing less, deliberately

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.

Listen By Igan D'Bayan · June 15, 2026 A closer look →

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philippinen Ehrengast banner on the Frankfurt fair hall with the Messeturm tower rising behind

Why write with the archipelago on fire?

‘Literature is the slower type of art which is consumed in seclusion, a great antidote against the flood of information.’

By Igan D'Bayan

Cecile Licad in white-framed glasses smiles from behind an open concert grand piano

Cecile Licad’s tones of home

A Hamburg Steinway on the Banaue Rice Terraces, paksiw every morning, and the word motorsiklo written where accelerando should be.

By Igan D'Bayan

A visitor walks past the vast tilted timber structure of the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, soil trays in the foreground

Heart & soil

A thousand hand-made tiles of soil from Calatagan, Baybay and Tampakan, built to erode: the Philippine Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale.

By Igan D'Bayan

Japanese designer Mihara Yasuhiro in front of a DJ setup, smiling and wearing one of his signature deconstructed sneakers

Meet the Japanese designer who expresses the sublime through the ridiculous

Japanese designer Mihara Yasuhiro brings his sculptural, street-meets-art sneakers to Studio Dimensione BGC, in a bold collab with Suyen Corp.

By Igan D'Bayan

Compilation grid of Scott Garceau’s donut paintings, showing album covers of Grace Jones, Joy Division, The Cars, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Björk, and The Beatles with donuts integrated into their artwork

A glazed rebellion: Scott Garceau’s hole-hearted art at The Crucible Gallery

The monolith on Who’s Next is now a donut, and so is the pulsar on Unknown Pleasures: Scott Garceau glazes rock’s most iconic sleeves.

By Igan D'Bayan

Canvas tote bags printed with a glowing gradient design resting on rows of curved wooden chairs

‘The Imagination peoples the air’: PHL prepares for literary spotlight at Frankfurt Book Fair

As Guest of Honour at the 2025 Frankfurter Buchmesse (FBM), the Philippines is boldly scripting a new chapter for its literature on the global stage.

By Igan D'Bayan

Ronald Ventura’s Istraktura, in which a small boy in a white tank top drags a chain across a grayscale construction site of orange cranes, mining trucks and a colossal stone face

Ronald Ventura’s ‘Kalupaan’: Appetite for reconstruction

Saints in hard hats and a bird nesting in a construction site: Ronald Ventura asks what progress costs, in the first show at Cloudgrey Gallery.

By Igan D'Bayan

A giant glowing orb of stacked lights rises from the desert plain near the Pyramids of Giza at dusk

The SpY who loved graffiti

A four-metre mirrored sphere at Giza, a globe inflated until it burst in Bilbao: the Spanish artist SpY brings his interventions to Art Fair Philippines.

By Igan D'Bayan

A tentacled figure in a dark overcoat stands on a rainy seaside promenade beneath a red umbrella, book in hand, as fish rain from the grey sky past a Victorian lamppost

So long, 2024, and no thanks for all the phish

Phishing texts, meetings about meetings, and A.I. acquaintances suddenly writing like Hitchens. Welcoming the new year with a renewed sense of dread.

By Igan D'Bayan

Artist Olan Ventura and First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos standing together in front of a colorful, deconstructed floral painting at Goldenberg Mansion

Tradition takes a selfie with disruption

Olan Ventura & Ronson Culibrina take us to the visual edge and back in Olan’s ‘Prismatic Petals’ and Ronson’s ‘Marahuyo’ exhibitions at Goldenberg Mansion.

By Igan D'Bayan

Bronze statue of José Rizal in an overcoat, chin resting on his hand, with bright chrysanthemums at its base and a Philippine flag over the misty hills behind

Feeling Rizal hover ‘In the Air’ tonight in Heidelberg

Rizal on bread, cheese and forever potatoes: retracing his Heidelberg addresses with Ambeth Ocampo, from the eye clinic to the river.

By Igan D'Bayan

Crowds fill the Philippines stand at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, a kite-framed timber canopy and book-lined shelves under a Philippines banner in the exhibition hall

Literature both spectral & realistic: PH gears up for primetime in 2025 Frankfurt book fair

The Philippines takes the Guest of Honour scroll from Italy for 2025: Patrick Flores and Stanley Ruiz on the pavilion, and a line from Sisa’s chapter.

By Igan D'Bayan

The Philippine pavilion stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair featuring custom wooden shelving units filled with books under warm spotlights

Frankfurter Buchmesse 2024: Books strike like printed lightning as ‘imagination peoples the air’

Great literature is about this very metamorphosis, about the wings that we all have, even if we no longer know we have them.

By Igan D'Bayan

Ronald Ventura’s ‘State of Bloom’: a woman in a pink gown amid palms, butterflies, engines and an astronaut under a teal sky

In bloom: Filipino artist Ronald Ventura sets new record at Christie’s

The artist continues not just to break records at auction houses but also records how society blooms away from what it is originally.

By Igan D'Bayan

Collage of artist Mia Herbosa and her paintings including Wild Thing, Russian Beauty, 21, and Yellow Roses

Mia Herbosa: Still lifes, dead birds, figures in repose, a world learning to breathe again

Three dead mayas on a studio floor in 2021 turned Mia Herbosa toward abstraction. Her new show is a visual diary of the years since.

By Igan D'Bayan

Sopranos Anna Migallos and Myramae Meneses with bass baritone Roby Malubay posing together at the launch of Progetto Puccini

Bringing out the opera in us

Four days of masterclasses at the Metropolitan Theater: Progetto Puccini argues that opera was never foreign to a country that sings mid-sentence.

By Igan D'Bayan

A collage of five rescued dogs in Bistro Group bandanas and shirts: a black-and-white dog, a yellow dog, and white-and-tan strays with their tongues out

Bistro Group named its rescued strays after restaurants

What started with a stray refusing to move from under Paul’s car became Bistro Fur Friends, and a headquarters that is home to fifteen dogs.

By Igan D'Bayan

Junyee gazing at his red root-like sculpture of a head on a wooden table by lattice windows

Junyee through time & space

From painting the faces of the dead in a Cebu funeral home to the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining: the long calvary of the father of Philippine installation art.

By Igan D'Bayan

Kaye Tinga, president of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, standing in a black top against a textured wall with a minimalist abstract painting

Kaye Tinga: ‘The CCP is more than just a building; it is a brand, a living entity.’

‘The CCP is really more than just a building; it is a living entity that encompasses everything about art and culture in our country.’

By Igan D'Bayan

The blue dial Patek Philippe Ref. 5330G-001 World Time watch with denim-patterned calfskin strap, displaying time zones and dates

Patek Philippe: How tech intersects with aesthetics

A World Time watch whose date follows you across zones, and a Greenbelt boutique: Deepa Chatrath on making things useful and beautiful.

By Igan D'Bayan

Composite of the Philippine Pavilion community library: installed inside the Venice Arsenale on the left, rebuilt outdoors in Angat, Bulacan on the right, where visitors gather along its slatted walls

Philippine Pavilion’s ‘Structures of Mutual Support’: From the Biennale to Bulacan

From an old armory in Venice to a barangay in Angat, the award-winning community library goes home to the people who helped build it.

By Igan D'Bayan

Maria Angelica Tan seated in her studio beside a large swirling blue and gold painting

The empire state of Maria Angelica Tan’s art

A Filipina in her early twenties, a Hudson Square gallery, and leftover adobo before the bus: Maria Angelica Tan distills New York into paint.

By Igan D'Bayan

Installation inside the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Biennale featuring a large grey boulder with a brass horn sticking out and hanging white textile sheets

Mountain song: PHL Pavilion brings the aura of Banahaw to the Biennale

In the Philippine Pavilion, visitors walk among fabric, fake stones and sound, following the light. Mark Salvatus brings Banahaw to Venice.

By Igan D'Bayan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A faceted kite-like sculpture of iridescent triangles hangs in the gallery for “Pneumatic Synergetic”

Somatosonic at The Crucible

Marco Ortiga, Tad Ermitaño and Christina Dy bring homemade instruments, pole dance and cheerful chaos to their “Pneumatic Synergetic” show at The Crucible.

By Igan D'Bayan

A packed auditorium bathed in red light at the opening ceremony of the 75th Frankfurter Buchmesse

Frankfurter Buchmesse 2023: Why books matter in a time of war & the ongoing assault on truth

Books are being banned, censored and even burned in parts of America. In Germany, they hold the world’s largest trade fair for books.

By Igan D'Bayan

The honeycomb-latticed pavilion of Guest of Honour Slovenia at the Frankfurt Book Fair

The Philippines is Frankfurt Book Fair 2025 Guest of Honour

Ten years after Indonesia, the Philippines lands the Frankfurt Book Fair Guest of Honour slot. We want this, we dreamt of this, we have earned this.

By Igan D'Bayan

Charlie Co painting of anguished figures in blue crowded into a boat on a fiery red impasto sea beneath a black crescent moon

Excess equals exuberance in Singapore show focusing on Philippine art

‘What makes Singaporeans respond remarkably well to artworks by Filipinos? I think it’s the sheer liveliness, the vigor, and the energy of Philippine art.’

By Igan D'Bayan

The Art of Drowning in Visions

Glenn Bautista drew Rizal’s monument from a line by line transcription of his 39 poems, then vanished for 15 years. On the artist we forgot.

By Igan D'Bayan

Jurors of the Philippine Pavilion for the 60th Venice Biennale standing and sitting together in a conference room during deliberations

Beyond the veil: Carlos Quijon Jr. & Mark Salvatus to represent PH at the Venice Biennale

Curator Carlos Quijon Jr. and artist Mark Salvatus on taking the Philippines to Venice, and the curator’s shift from shaman to jack of all trades.

By Igan D'Bayan

A skull-faced figure in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat types at an old typewriter in a dark room, facing a second skull wired into a tangle of cables and machinery

Who’s afraid of big, bad artificial intelligence?

Talking nicely to the chatbots in case they remember us later, and finding that the scariest thing online is still the people doing the typing.

By Igan D'Bayan

Detail of a lifelike dead female centaur with a spotted horse body lying on pale stone tiles

People, events, dead centaurs, places

A family of dead centaurs in the Danish Pavilion, a German floor torn up to its Nazi-era joints: pavilion-hopping at the 59th Venice Biennale.

By Igan D'Bayan

German pianist Joja Wendt playing a black Steinway grand piano at the PGA Cars gallery

Steinway artist Joja Wendt plays boogie-woogie & Beethoven (with flying bumblebees in between)

The German pianist who swings from boogie-woogie to Beethoven, in Manila for Steinway & Sons’ The Artistry in Modern Precision at PGA Cars.

By Igan D'Bayan

Weaving installation with red threads and textiles hanging from the rafters of the Arsenale during the Philippine Pavilion exhibition at the Venice Biennale

An invisible thread that binds us all

The Pavilion’s closing act reaches the Pinoys of Venice: the waiters, the healthcare workers, the household helpers, all one existential tapestry.

By Igan D'Bayan

Two works by Marco Ortiga: a black steel hoop sculpture and a faceted polyhedron lined with mirror shards

The art of Marco Ortiga: Through the looking glass, weirdly

The conceptual artist holds a mirror up to this ‘see-me world’, and instead of showing clarity and reflection, purveys cracks and malformation.

By Igan D'Bayan

Portrait of NCCA Chairman Nick Lizaso posing in a garden in Venice, wearing a barong Tagalog

Nick Lizaso: 10,000 stories and one heart for the masses

After a life on stage and screen, the NCCA chairman calls himself simply an audience member now, watching people watch performances.

By Igan D'Bayan

A gondolier steers passengers along a Venetian canal past faded orange palazzi

Heavy liquid: Milk of Dreams at the Venice Biennale

Surrealism, an emptied Russian Pavilion and a fountain smuggled out of Kyiv in a white Audi: the 59th Biennale, where the going gets weirder.

By Igan D'Bayan

A large, colorful hand-woven tapestry hanging inside the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Backstage at the Biennale

Talking art with the curator and artists of the Philippine Pavilion over liters of Birra Moretti in the beautiful sinking city.

By Igan D'Bayan

Fiber artist Aze Ong stands beneath her sprawling white crochet installation, webbed panels and rings spanning the dark ceiling, one lacy length draped over her shoulder like a gown

Aze Ong weaves a tale of pain & transcendence

Chronic pain in the hands of a fiber artist who crochets for a living: Aze Ong on making her largest work yet for Art Fair Philippines.

By Igan D'Bayan

Portrait of Filipino author Miguel Syjuco leaning against a wall and looking at the camera

Miguel Syjuco & the ongoing war over who will tell the stories the world will know as true

The Ilustrado novelist on disinformation, power, and who gets to tell the stories the world will know as true, from a desk of literary detritus.

By Igan D'Bayan

Sepia collage of F. Sionil José: the smiling novelist in his black beret beside a marble bust of his likeness, layered over a scene of him at the typewriter and acacia branches overhead

The solitary saga of Manong Frankie

‘When you write,’ Manong Frankie said in a voice that could fell ancient trees, ‘it’s not just with words.’ There is a trail of a life in every word.

By Igan D'Bayan

In a black-and-white photo, guitarist Noli Aurillo bends low over his acoustic guitar, hair veiling his face, playing in a dim bar beside a microphone stand

The day the music died

Goodbye to the late, great Noli Aurillo, who chanted ‘Au au au!’ to the room before conjuring magic with a deck of cards or one guitar.

By Igan D'Bayan

Interior of the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale featuring the wooden library structure and daily visitors

Philippines wins historic first award at Venice Architecture Biennale

Curators Khadka and Furunes take a Special Mention for “Structures of Mutual Support,” the Philippines’ first-ever Venice Biennale award.

By Igan D'Bayan

Painting of a grayscale young woman with a color anime-eyes panel collaged across her face, Ventura’s Doll Eyes

Ronald Ventura’s hyper-realist Olympics

Two Tokyo shows timed to the Olympics: Ronald Ventura on anime eyes, emoji as language, and a reality we can no longer tell from the cartoon.

By Igan D'Bayan

‘David Medalla has left us to enter the dream’

Trying to encapsulate David Medalla in one article is like reducing eternity to an hour. His partner and friends attempt it anyway.

By Igan D'Bayan

Ronson Culibrina sits in his studio surrounded by sketches, brushes and vivid canvases

Ronson Culibrina’s monsoon madness & rainbow spills

Talim Island boyhood, an outrigger’s balancing arm and a witch under a weather-map umbrella: Ronson Culibrina paints the temper of the times.

By Igan D'Bayan

Painting Dark Smoke by Olan Ventura: a blue figure in a gas mask clutching its head before a mushroom cloud

Galleria Pandemia: Art in the Time of COVID

Ruiz, Ocampo, Miel, Borlongan and Justiniani on what the lockdown did to their practice, and why art is the last thing out of Pandora’s jar.

By Igan D'Bayan

An aged three-eyed Cthulhu in plaid pajamas sits chin in hand like Rodin’s Thinker, volumes of Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus stacked at his side, while the TV announces the COVID-19 pandemic officially over

Art, The Day After

Written from inside the 2020 lockdown: what a random Tuesday will taste like again, and why art does not thrive in the bleakest of moments.

By Igan D'Bayan

Visitor in patterned clothes standing on a glass bridge looking down into the infinite mirrors and structures of Mark Justiniani’s Venice Biennale installation

A flood of words, water & wonder at the closing ceremony of the Venice Art Biennale

As the Biennale closes, Mark Justiniani’s mirrored “Island Weather” seems to ripple out of the Philippine Pavilion into the flooding lagoon city.

By Igan D'Bayan

Retro VHS-box artwork, “D’Videohaus presents”: Brando’s Godfather above a Taxi Driver sticker, a Scarface figure, jukebox, barber chair, family Polaroids and a flaming red sports car, ’80s Action Classics

The Art of War in the House of the Rising Sons

De Niro, Pacino, and a neighborhood video store ran by a balding guy we called the Caterpillar. Notes on a boyhood measured in VHS tape.

By Igan D'Bayan

Dr. Jaime Laya stands between a blue electric typewriter and a stack of art books, in a library of carved santos and floor-to-ceiling shelves

How a bullfrog keeps Jaime Laya awake when it rains

Dr. Jaime Laya on the frogs he had shipped in from the Candaba swamp, the somber santos and vintage narra indoors, and the first sentence he labors over.

By Igan D'Bayan

Dr. Jaime Laya sits in the carved narra doorway of his library, bookshelves and santos behind him, a brass gramophone horn and a caned chair beside him

If Filipiniana is a flower, then Jaime Laya is a gardener

A morning in Jaime Laya’s Quezon City compound: a bahay kubo built without nails, barandilyas off a demolished house, books stacked as a shelter.

By Igan D'Bayan

Jun and Menchu Lopez beside a home coffee bar built like a Starbucks counter, with a life-size Predator figure standing guard at the right

At home with Jun & Menchu Lopez: Where every wall is a door and the Force is always brewing

A house tour where every wall turns out to be a door, the coffee is always brewing, and the Force runs through a home in a galaxy not so far away.

By Igan D'Bayan

Martin Honasan and Barbie Almalbis on a sofa in a warm-lit room, he looking through a large sketchpad, she playing a semi-hollow electric guitar, guitars hanging on the wall behind

At home with Martin Honasan & Barbie Almalbis: Cradle of art, love & a cat named after Vernie Varga

A house tour with Martin Honasan and Barbie Almalbis: a cradle of art and love, boxes of keepsakes nobody throws out, and a cat named after Vernie Varga.

By Igan D'Bayan

Raul Francisco and Joanna Preysler-Francisco sit close on a mustard sofa holding their brown dachshund, a framed portrait and gilded lamp behind them

Raul Francisco & Joanna Preysler-Francisco: Dark, seductive art in the house of love

A Parisian dream in the middle of manic Metro Manila: the Franciscos’ art-filled flat, and the love story beneath the chiaroscuro.

By Igan D'Bayan

Top-down view of Mark Justiniani’s glass and steel installation Island Weather, featuring lighted infinite mirrors and geometric structural shapes resembling islands

Island of souls

Mark Justiniani and curator Tessa Maria Guazon on Island Weather, the glass-and-steel archipelago built for the 58th Venice Art Biennale.

By Igan D'Bayan

Fr. Jason Dy standing inside the Jesuit Residence chapel in front of his mobile installation Propesiya at Katuparan

Fr. Jason Dy: The Parable of Dead birds & The red umbrella

Jesuit priest and Ateneo professor Fr. Jason Dy discusses community art, walking Intramuros with a red umbrella, and his custom batik polo shirts.

By Igan D'Bayan

Bigboy Cheng in a black hoodie holds a finger to his lips in front of a framed portrait of himself defaced with red spray paint

Bigboy Cheng: At home with the crown prince of Fresh

A house tour with the crown prince of Secret Fresh, where sneakers, designer toys and Filipino contemporary art end up sharing the very same shelves.

By Igan D'Bayan

Tarot-style portrait cards of the interviewed culture-makers, each one named and montaged with their own work, spread across a dark table beside a face-down card printed with an all-seeing eye

Agents of Culture

Cecile Licad, Mark Justiniani and more Filipino culture-makers on the simplest hard questions: what makes you happy, and what is your hope for the country?

By Igan D'Bayan

Spanish artist Ginés Serrán works on the face of his full scale clay model of General Martín Delgado on horseback, later cast in bronze for Iloilo, in a studio with tall windows

The sad, extraordinary tale of a general in the Revolución exiled as a ‘leper,’ as told by a Spanish artist

Spanish artist Ginés Serrán on sculpting a bronze monument in Iloilo for General Martín Delgado, the revolutionary hero exiled to Culion.

By Igan D'Bayan

Bob Feleo in a white shirt looking up at his life-size bark-textured figure with a flame for a head, arms raised over a wide circle of small clay balls on the gallery floor

A shot of Basi with Bob Feleo

‘I don’t believe in inspiration,’ says master sculptor Bob Feleo, on the Basi Revolt of 1807 and why art should provoke thought.

By Igan D'Bayan

Rodel Tapaya in a cap and Marina Cruz in a grey suit, both in Art Fair Philippines 2020 exhibitor badges, smiling side by side in a gallery booth

Rodel Tapaya and Marina Cruz: Two for the road of art

Contemporary Filipino artists Rodel Tapaya and Marina Cruz on folklore, memory, and building an artistic life together in Bulacan.

By Igan D'Bayan

Dark illustration of a Scream-headed model maker painting a tiny graveyard diorama at a cluttered workbench, walls of numbered lit shadow boxes behind him under a sign reading 27 Dioramas of Horror Stories

27 or so encounters with the weird

Ghost sightings, haunted Parador hotels, and weird encounters in Malabon that prove the living are far scarier than the dead.

By Igan D'Bayan

A long-haired writer sits at a desk with a crow and a notebook marked Notes on Absence, ringed by numbered portraits of women under the hand-lettered title 26 Girlfriends I Never Had

26 girlfriends I never had

Twenty-six women, none of them his: near-misses, five-second flames and unrequited muses, ending with an art student called Racer G.

By Igan D'Bayan

A hyena in a bathrobe slumps on a sofa with beer bottles and a pizza box, walled in by stacks of romantic comedies under a poster reading Amor Vincit Omnia, Love Hurts

Love hurts… and so does rectal probing

A Valentine’s dispatch from the pit: heartbreak playlists, actual rectal probing, the smiley of doom, and why, oooh, crap hurts.

By Igan D'Bayan

Steel Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso with a sunray blue dial and small-seconds counter, its rectangular case caught mid-swivel above a navy leather strap, against black

Reverso of fortune

‘It’s like a heart beating, moving inside. The cage is made of a hundred parts and it weighs less than a gram.’ The Reverso turns eighty.

By Igan D'Bayan

Three-eyed Cthulhu in a leather jacket croons “I Will Survive” at a karaoke dive bar strung with San Miguel Beer neon, as two alien patrons nurse their drinks at the next table

Videoke of Doom at the End of the World

Three minutes as Ian Brown, then back to being you. Nights in the karaoke rooms of Malate, where no one ever gets over anybody.

By Igan D'Bayan

In a sepia photo, poet Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta stands on a low wooden pedestal in a dim library aisle between towering bookshelves, absorbed in an open book

Requiem for Lady Polyester

Poets mandate their own immortality. A protege remembers Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta, UST’s Lady Polyester, over Leonard Cohen and beer.

By Igan D'Bayan

Cthulhu figurine in a graduation cap and gown striking a disco pose, one arm raised, before a crowd of horror-figure toys on a wooden floor

Dance the disco corrosion

A commencement address for the doomed: writer’s block, Eva Longoria as a sign of the apocalypse, and one ordinary Monday that broke a heart.

By Igan D'Bayan

Patrons gathering at the bar inside the legendary Penguin Cafe in Malate

Last rites at Penguin

A last drink at Penguin Cafe in Malate: Noli Aurillo plucking, a Rolling Stones epitaph, and thanks for all the fish crackers.

By Igan D'Bayan

Illuminated theater marquee glowing outside a dark movie palace at night

Cinema Purgatorio

An AB Lit student who snuck out of class returns to the dark: art films, a lost girl named Joy, and a professor finally answered.

By Igan D'Bayan

Graphic poster art for the Lino Brocka film retrospective in Vienna

Brocka’s brain

Nora Aunor carries her cross of water containers to Vienna: a Lino Brocka retrospective at the Künstlerhaus, unexpected and overdue.

By Igan D'Bayan

Viennale poster graphic with festival typography and Lino Brocka film retrospective card

Vienna International Film Festival pays tribute to Brocka: V for Viennale

Autumn in Vienna for the Viennale: Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, Tilda Swinton retrospectives, and Nora Aunor on screen in Lino Brocka’s Bona.

By Igan D'Bayan

Manuel Ocampo’s anarchy in the R.P.

The Manuel Ocampo conversation concludes: anarchy in the R.P., institutional critique, and hell according to Seinfeld’s Elaine.

By Igan D'Bayan

Portrait of artist Manuel Ocampo by photographer M.M. Yu

An apocalyptic chat with Manuel Ocampo: Swastikating between art and death

Manuel Ocampo, between Bosch and Cracked magazine: an apocalyptic conversation on painting, death and the institutional critique of himself.

By Igan D'Bayan

Graphic art portrait of Kobe Bryant in his Lakers jersey against a dark background

Mamba No. 3

Kobe Bryant in his Mamba years: from ball hog to facilitator and orchestrator, with the eternal Jordan comparison hanging overhead.

By Igan D'Bayan

Illustration of a Sydney DVD store front and autumn streetscape with movie poster art

Black is the color and none is the number

Autumn in Sydney, the bluest skies, and a DVD-store crawl through gallows comedy, Cheech and Chong, and documentaries about dictators.

By Igan D'Bayan

Sepia-toned vintage studio portrait of a young man with wavy hair in a knit collared shirt, a handwritten inscription reading ‘Devotedly yours’ across the shoulder

Daddy Groovy

The colonel who sketched a dream house that was never built, and the son who has started to see him in the mirror every morning.

By Igan D'Bayan

Mock theatre poster for a Poldertheater production of Hamlet: a hyena in an Elizabethan doublet, its face streaked red, cradles a skull among Filipino tombs beneath a tattered Philippine flag

Dead thoughts about death and dying

A real human skull inside a bookcase, mortuary curiosities, and a middle-of-the-night meditation on Damien Hirst and why death spares no one.

By Igan D'Bayan

A man in an ECM Records t-shirt with a surreally painted face carries a stack of LPs topped by John Coltrane’s Blue Train past a metal record shop

Life, death and all that jazz

Mingus and Coltrane, Harry’s Bar at Boat Quay, and a goodbye to drummer Bob Barreto. Life may be short, but the beats are infinite.

By Igan D'Bayan

Little Baritan

Little Britain’s grotesques summon a cast much closer to home: the jokers and one-pair-of-trousers eccentrics of a Malabon boyhood.

By Igan D'Bayan

A bearded Victorian naturalist in a specimen-filled study holds a wooden sign lettered Questions 67 & 68 beside a skull, a tortoise and a microscope

Questions 67 and 68

Why do noontime hosts say happy viewing, why do movie goons wear leather in this heat, and what does Hollaback Girl actually mean?

By Igan D'Bayan

A figure in a horned skull mask and pleated ruff holds a leather volume lettered Fictionary before a stormy sea and a mausoleum of books

Look it up… in the fictionary

Neil Gaiman says myths are resilient. Here are definitions for words that do not exist: womanhood, fashion, fine dining, numbers, scientists.

By Igan D'Bayan

Sepia surrealist photograph of a writer with the head from Munch’s The Scream typing at an antique typewriter, its paper scroll spilling out and becoming a sheet covered body with bare feet

Hello blankness, my old friend

The blank page as a death shroud, a caterpillar condominium at a battle of the bands, and a beauty queen on a jeepney who broke the spell.

By Igan D'Bayan

A figure in a Santa suit with a tentacled insect face and white gloves sits in an armchair beside a small poodle dressed as an elf

A post-christmas apocalypse

The wine bottles are empty and the lights have gone out. What is left is traffic, cab drivers turned weathermen, and a fatigue without a name.

By Igan D'Bayan

A gaunt, mud-caked man sits in the Thinker pose on a stump, ankle-deep in black floodwater, as octopus tentacles rise around him in a derelict green-stained room

Meditations on everything and nothing

Three days of rain, a motel in Malabon, a Chevy Chase moment in Boracay, and the weirdos who turn up in every season of a flooded life.

By Igan D'Bayan

A screaming blue infant in a superhero suit and red cape wears a pageant sash reading 2003, standing against a dark painted backdrop

Let the old freaky year make way for the new freaky year

A year-end gratitude list from a man at peace with the freaks: working ears, a flushing toilet, legal beer, and readers who write back.

By Igan D'Bayan

Close-up of a green tentacle-faced Cthulhu in round tinted glasses, the words ALMOST and INFAMOUS lit across the lenses above a crowd and stage lights

Almost Infamous: Zen and the art of rock n’ roll heckling

How a rusty caterpillar ride at Fiesta Carnival and one Scorpions song turned a Malabon kid into a rock critic. No money for nothing.

By Igan D'Bayan

Charcoal figure studies on easels and scattered across the floor of a peeling, light-filled life-drawing studio with plaster busts

Sketching skinscapes and other epiphanies

A Saturday nude sketching session with Malang, Arturo Luz, BenCab and Anita Magsaysay Ho, and one starving non-artist with a mangled pencil.

By Igan D'Bayan

Road-worn black Fender Precision Bass with a tortoiseshell pickguard on a stand, beside a bass amp topped with a Wi-Fi router, neon-green cables plugged into both

Bass(ic) instinct and the Internet

Before tab sites, you learned Jaco by ear off a worn-out tape. An ode to the low end, written at the dawn of Internet music culture.

By Igan D'Bayan