Students of the University of the East College of Fine Arts, Architecture and Design (CFAD) continue to make waves in the local and international art scenes.
Jericho Cedric Maravilla, a third-year Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) major in Visual Communication student, won 2nd Place in the Animation Category of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ 34th Gawad CCP Para sa Alternatibo Pelikula at Video 2022—touted as the oldest independent film festival in Asia—for his film ‘Black and White Road’. The festival’s jury also awarded Mr. Maravilla a special citation for Experimental Animation for the said film, which depicts sensitive topics such as self-harm and suicide. It tells a story about an artist’s journey, of how he wanted to escape reality through the “Black and White Road” of illusions, the surreal, and his imagination because at the end of the road is where he finds peace, happiness and freedom. The surreal visuals along the Black and White Road are based on his artworks, which are parallel to the real events and situations of his life that shows how he fell out of love with himself.
Another Gawad Alternatibo awardee is James Benedict Calleja, a Yearend 2022 graduate with the UE degree of BFA major in Visual Communication, Magna Cum Laude. He who won the Honorable Mention Award for his short experimental film ‘I Wanna Be a Tutubi’ (‘I Wanna Be a Dragonfly’) under the Experimental Category. The film is based on the “tutubi” Filipino children’s game that involves hiding a small object, such as a stone, in the players’ palms. The game’s mechanics and chant are a metaphor for how it feels to be queer hiding in the closet for a very long time, and the feeling of longing for freedom—hiding their true sexuality hindering them from living their lives to the fullest and be free. Mr. Calleja’s film wants to show how someone’s awareness of their sexuality for a long time carries this feeling of longing to be free from the closet and the feeling of relief after they have the chance to finally release the “stone” or the fear that they have been holding on to their whole life. Before its Gawad CCP Alternatibo selection, the film had its world premiere at the historic city center of the 18th Athens Digital Art Festival in Greece on May 25, 2022.
‘I Wanna be a Tutubi’ was also part of the curated International Art Exhibition for Solidarity at the Alphabet Art Centre, the New Museum of Networked Art, Agricola de Cologne at artvideoKOELN, together with four other experimental shorts: ‘The Loud Quietude’ by fourth-year UE BFA major in Visual Communication student Anjella Gieneena Cruz; ‘Station of Anxiety’ by Maria Ysabela Santos, a Yearend 2022 UE BFA major in Visual Communication graduate, Magna Cum Laude; ‘Painting the Light’ by Yssa Marie Flores, a Yearend 2022 UE BFA Visual Communication graduate, Cum Laude; and ‘First to Turn, Last to Arrive’ by Timothy Tatel, likewise a Yearend 2022 UE BFA major in Visual Communication graduate.
Miss Flores’s ‘Painting with Light’ had a United States premiere, at the VisArts Center Rockville. Meanwhile, Mr. Tatel’s ‘First to Turn, Last to Arrive’ was also screened as part of the official exhibition program of India’s M3:G3 Cross Encounters Film Festival 2022.
Other UE CFAD Visual Communication students are on a roll in festivals both here and abroad. Third-year BFA major in Visual Communication student Angelo Miguel “Ulap” Chua is representing the Philippines in the Tokyo Festival Farm Lab, a three-month performance art camp. He was selected out of hundreds of applicants through a rigorous screening process, from project application to panel interviews. Tokyo Festival Farm is a framework for education outreach and creative talent development. It was launched in 2021 by combining Asian Performing Arts Farm (APAF), a platform promoting exchange and growth among young artists in Asia.
Mr. Chua is part of the “Lab” program that aims to cultivate young professionals who can freely navigate the many increasingly fluid borders of our world. In his proposed project titled Performing Hybridity–Photojournalism as a tool for theater making, the creative work is inspired by the concept and ideals of “wabi sabi” or, in traditional Japanese aesthetics, a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. Mr. Chua’s theater background and photography obsession over the symmetry, the perfection of a shot, and composition brought him to encounter the ideals and philosophy of wabi sabi. To see the beauty in impermanence, and imperfection, in turn seeing flawed things as beautiful, appreciating the melancholy that time evokes, and a strong respect for life’s fragility and withering.
The three-month hybrid art residency started last August 3, 2022, and Mr. Chua needs to present a project on October 16, for the open sharing session. He is the first UE student accepted into this comprehensive urban arts festival.
Congratulations and kudos, Warrior Artists!
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