April 2026 Global Art Agenda: navigating memory, materiality and migration across borders

The Drawing Room

The Manila-based gallery presented Narratives of Accumulation and Resistance: Memory, Materiality, and Social Fabric, featuring Gerardo Tan, Soler Santos, Ged Merino, and Cian Dayrit. The collective showcase explored how accumulations of physical materials, historical memories, and cultural information mediate contemporary life. Together, the artists used material intervention as an act of archival resistance against dominant historical and environmental structures.

Ames Yavuz Gallery

Ames Yavuz Gallery featured a strong contingent of Filipino artists in their international presentation, placing them in a dynamic cross-cultural dialogue with artists from Thailand, Australia, and Singapore. Plet Bolipata presented Walk Among Us, a kaleidoscopic, surreal tableau highlighting female agency where men float about on a carpet. Elmer Borlongan provided a stark tonal contrast with Dark Side of the Moon, a quiet, introspective painting featuring a solitary subject on a desolate shoreline. The acclaimed duo Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan anchored the presentation with their monumental sculptural explorations of migration and memory.

10 Chancery Lane Gallery

Filipina transdisciplinary artist Josephine Turalba marked her second showcase with the debut of four new pieces crafted from acrylic, leather, and spent 12-gauge brass bullet shells. Turalba used a hydrofeminist lens to address geopolitical tensions in the West Philippine Sea, transforming weapons into symbols of resilience and survival. By combining soft elements with hard materials, she critiqued the imbalance of power, framing aquatic environments not as possessions to be occupied, but as vulnerable ecosystems.

Joshua Serafin

Expanding the Filipino footprint beyond the main convention centre halls, Serafin was featured as part of the Art Basel HK Cultural Institution Showcase. They presented a solo exhibition titled Grieve the Departed Wound at Tomorrow Maybe in Eaton HK. The exhibition served as an immersive “performative milieu” where the boundary between spectator and performer dissolved. Serafin also participated as a speaker in the “Art Basel Conversations” series, examining themes of digital worldmaking and the shaping of cultural and bodily flows.

Read more: Geloy Concepcion’s renowned social media project gets an exhibition treatment at the Ateneo Art Gallery

As the consequences of the Anthropocene accelerate, Filipino artists are turning to the water—not just as a geographic boundary, but as a living archive of trauma, survival, and continuous flow.

Colegio de San Ildefonso | Somos Pacífico: The Acapulco-Manila Galleon

Mexico City, Mexico

This monumental exhibition traces the profound cultural heritage that connects Mexico and the Philippines over 250 years, from 1565 to 1815, via the Manila Galleon maritime route. An expanded iteration of a previous showcase at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore, the exhibition features more than 300 objects that illuminate the political, economic, and social dimensions of the intercultural relationship between Acapulco and Manila. Over 20 objects were selected from Philippine collections—including the Ayala Museum, Intramuros Administration, and Museo Enrique Zóbel—underscoring Manila's significant role in this global maritime trade. As Fernando Zóbel de Ayala noted, these historical objects signify the interconnectedness forged over centuries of exchange, reflected in influences on food, language, clothing, and crafts evident throughout the exhibition.

Somos Pacifico runs until May 31

La Biennale di Venezia | Sea of Love / Dagat ng Pag-ibig

Arsenale, Venice, Italy

Representing the Philippines at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Cuyson transforms the pavilion into a profound homage to Filipino seafarers. Curated by Mara Gladstone, the exhibition situates paintings, videos, and sculptures to form an abstracted horizon embedded with an oceanic love story. Rooted in queer and postcolonial ecologies, Cuyson brilliantly employs the mussel as a motif, method, and metaphor for kinship across land and sea. Like the under-recognised yet resilient Filipino seafarer, the mussel filters, clusters, and holds the memory of the oceans within its very form.

The Philippine Pavilion will open to the public on May 9 and will continue to be on view until November 22

La Biennale di Venezia | In Minor Keys

Various locations around Venice, Italy

Further amplifying the Philippine presence at the main Biennale, Pio Abad is featured in In Minor Keys. Curated by Koyo Kouoh, the exhibition brings together 110 participants across geographies. Abad's inclusion expands upon Kouoh’s relational geography, looking at how the ingenuity and material experimentation of varied practices bear connections to movements in simultaneity.

In his Instagram post, Abad expressed his excitement about being selected: “Deeply honoured to be part of ‘In Minor Keys’ the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Koyo Kouoh. It’s bittersweet not being able to celebrate with Koyo today but I am looking forward to realising her creative vision in collaborating with her amazing team—Gabe, Rasha, Maria Helene, Siddharta and Rory. Salamat Koyo.”

In Minor Keys will open to the public on May 9 and will continue to be on view until November 22

Foto Bali Festival 2026 | White Water

Nuanu Creative City, Bali, Indonesia

Selected from nearly 700 submissions to be one of just 36 featured artists, Mejia addresses the festival's theme, Afterimage, which examines how photography continues to shape memory beyond the captured moment. His project explores the intersection of memory, colonial history, and rising sea levels across the Philippine archipelago. By drawing from flood-damaged family archives and documenting coastal communities affected by climate change, Mejia’s White Water reflects on how shifting shorelines actively challenge fixed ideas of history, borders, and identity.

FOTO Bali Festival runs from June 3 to July 12

How do we negotiate the historical violence and the quiet aspirations that define the Filipino experience? In New York and Venice, artists are answering this by reconfiguring religious devotion, historical archives, and the dignity of everyday labour.

Whitney Biennial 2026 | Enzo Camacho (in collaboration with Ami Lien)

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, USA

Featured in the 82nd Whitney Biennial, which focuses on themes of connectivity, ecology, and technology, Camacho and Lien present a striking sculptural work taking the form of Catholic altarpieces with doors that open to narrative scenes. The imagery reflects over a century of US colonial involvement in the Philippines alongside peasant and worker resistance—ranging from a 1901 uprising to the 2025 crash of a US spy plane.

The Whitney Biennial 2026 runs from March 8 until August 23

Whitney Biennial 2026 | José Maceda (in collaboration with Aki Onda) and Jasmin Sian

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, USA

The Biennial also highlights José Maceda’s Ugnayan (1974), a monumental sound installation originally composed for 20 radios across Manila, now featuring audio activated by Aki Onda. Nearby, New York-based artist Jasmin Sian cuts intricate lace-like motifs of animals and plants using an X-Acto knife. The meticulous act of painting these living beings—sometimes with a single-bristle brush—serves to create memorials and protective dwellings that honour their existence.

The Whitney Biennial 2026 runs from March 8 until August 23

DF Art Agency | Pangarap: The Return of Two Visions, One Filipino Dream

Palazzo Mora, Venice, Italy

Returning to Venice for a collateral event organised by the European Cultural Centre, these two artists converge in a distilled conversation regarding resilience and lived experience. Pongbayog’s figurative realism honours the dignity of labourers and everyday workers, grounding the exhibition in realities shaped by endurance. Conversely, Padua challenges perception with his hyper-detailed trompe l'oeil compositions, reflecting the fragile architecture of dreams. Together at Palazzo Mora, they form a compelling dialogue bridging struggle, aspiration, reality, and illusion.

This exhibition will have a private VIP preview starting May 7, will open to the public on May 9, and will continue to be on view until November 22

There are other artists to watch out for this year with their international pursuits. At the recent Philippine Art Round Table hosted by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Silverlens founder Isa Lorenzo expressed her excitement about the upcoming global exhibitions of Marigold Santos, Imelda Cajipe Endaya, Martha Atienza, Nicole Coson, Poklong Anading, Wawi Navarroza in New York, Ryan Villamael in Hong Kong, Carlos Villa and Leo Valledor in San Francisco, and the late Pacita Abad’s major exhibition at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, Spain. 

This season’s international art agenda proves that the Filipino creative spirit cannot be contained within a single geography. As our artists traverse the globe—from the historical depths of the Venice canals to the contemporary creative ecosystems of Bali and the institutional halls of New York—they do not merely participate in the global conversation; they challenge, disrupt, and enrich it. They invite the world to pause, look closer, and recognise that our localised histories of resistance, ecological survival, and communal memory are, in fact, universally intertwined.

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