“Ugnayan,” a Lesson on Collaboration and Exchange

The dominance of Manila as the center of the Philippine art scene has long defined the narrative of success and visibility of Filipino artists. But this centralism might soon be yielding...

Registration Opens for Visayas Island Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference Aklan in November 2025

VIVA ExCon, or Visayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference, is the longest-running biennial gathering of artists and art communities from all over the...

A Room to Breathe

The conversation began quite organically, in 2024, with Johanz Mercurio simply showing up at Thrive Art Gallery, talking about this project he and his...

Blurred Liminalities in Between: Everywhere is Here at Thrive Art Gallery

How would a visual medium encapsulate abstract understandings of location, dimension, space, setting, and the miscellany of social themes and issues which come to play in the liminalities and...

A Day in the Life: Van Bagañgan

On social media, Van Bagañgan is known as Alima Embroidery. Using embroidery as his chosen medium, Van transforms objects into thread art, imbued with the delicate tenderness of care,...

Musings on the Dissonance between Artists’ Intent and Critics’ Interpretation

I remember a conversation I had with a fellow artist a long time ago. The artist expressed concern after observing a huge difference between an interpretation of their painting...