SINGAPORE: How does one turn an empty floor into a creative space, teeming with visually-arresting and thought-provoking art at the same time?
Surely, there is more to making certain every inch is fully utilized or that exhibiting artists can squeeze in as many of their work as they can within their designated area.
This is definitely one of the questions running through the minds of art enthusiasts who’ve been in and out of 11 massive venues at the ongoing Singapore Biennale 2019, an international contemporary art exhibition in the Lion City which ends on March 22.
Since November 22 last year, the sixth edition of Singapore Biennale has shone the spotlight on 77 artists and art collectives from 36 countries and territories. Impressive as these sizeable numbers are already, they become all the more so when one finds out that only a lean team of six curators and one artistic director collaborated to mount this huge regional event.
Filipinos will especially be proud to know that not only do they have seven compatriots as featured artists at the Biennale; or that one of the six curators, Renan Laru-an, is also a Filipino (the rest are from Singapore, Malaysia, Romania and Thailand); but that no less than the entire exhibit’s artistic director proudly hails from the Philippines.
His name is Patrick Flores — a Filipino art historian, curator and educator, who is also noted for being one of the major forces behind the Philippines’ triumphant return to the prestigious Venice Biennale in 2015, following a long 51-year hiatus.
Certainly one of the most prominent figures in Philippine contemporary art today, Flores now also holds the distinction as the first Filipino ever to lead the Singapore Biennale.
“Yes, I am its first Filipino artistic director. But it is also my first time to be an artistic director of a biennale. I’ve had opportunities to curate — meaning to be part of a curatorial team — but never as its director,” Flores, truly humbled, said at this one-on-one interview he granted The Sunday Times Magazine in Singapore.
As it turns out, it was Flores who was sought by the organizers of the Singapore Biennale to submit a proposal for the event.
“It was an invitation to specific people. I don’t know who the others were but I think there were five who were asked to propose. We all submitted our proposals and all were interviewed by the committee. From the process, I was chosen,” he recalled.
Asked why he thinks he stood out for the steering committee, Flores humbly reckoned it was his body of work as curator, his expertise as an art historian and his previous works with some institutions in Singapore.
“And maybe they also thought about my intellectual investment in Southeast Asia because I work in the region,” he added modestly.
If it’s noticeable how The Sunday Times Magazine keeps using the words humble and modest to describe Flores, it’s because this artistic genius truly is amid his definitive success. Add to this his close to 25-year experience as curator of international exhibitions, it’s refreshing that Flores remains amiable and approachable.
For one, he is never condescending to anyone uninformed about the visual arts and patiently answers any question asked of him. He would also initiate conversations with any familiar face he would see checking the exhibits. Most of all, his staff only talk about him with the utmost sincerity and admiration for his work and professionalism even when he is not around.
To be sure, Flores has broken the stereotype of aloof and highfalutin artists, just as he has broken barriers for Filipino curators and directors with his international success. In fact, even for the Biennale, he broke the tradition of using the theme and opted to use a title, making the artistic endeavor as accessible as he is.
As such, it is only fitting that on the Sunday before the Philippines begins the celebration of National Arts Month, The Sunday Times Magazine puts the spotlight on Patrick Flores, who so successfully promotes Filipino visual arts on the global stage, while opening art as a whole to the world.
The Sunday Times Magazine:
Can you talk a little bit about your childhood? Was art encouraged and nourished at the Flores home?
Patrick Flores: My father was an accountant and a lawyer by training. He worked as a government auditor for the Commission on Audit in the Visayas. Wherever he was assigned, he would take us. So I moved around quite a lot when I was little, maybe every two years until we settled in Manila around 1979.
I think that exposure to culture that is not centric, not Manila, not Tagalog, shaped me too. It was also a privilege to be exposed to a new language and to new sets of friends every two years.
My father read a lot, he was interested in politics and he came from a political family in Iloilo. There were many books in the house as he read much and he was interested in ideas and politics too. My mother, on the other hand, was a piano teacher so my childhood was also filled with music all the time.
So I guess I was formed in that environment of music, books, politics or at least current events.
Were you also into creating art yourself?
I wasn’t. Maybe I appreciated things that were creative and artistic.
I began to write for our high school paper and then I took up, first Spanish in the University of the Philippines because I wanted to work in the United Nations and I thought that majoring in Spanish was in a way, an entry point.
But I shifted to Humanities after a year because some charismatic Humanities professor, in a way, inspired me to shift. I finished that in the university with Spanish as my minor.
How then did you discover the path of being an art curator?
I was trained as an art historian, not really as a curator. My work as a curator was an extension of my work as an art historian because I wrote about art, I explained art, I also represented art like overseas, represented art from the Philippines for instance.
So it was almost like not really natural but there is a kind of logical movement from teaching art history and doing curatorial work.
Would you therefore say your capacity as an art historian complements your career as a curator?
The two actually mutually benefit from each other — my work as curator is informed by my research in art history and my work as an art historian becomes more creative because I work with living artists, with exhibitions. As such, they’re less confined to the archive and the library, and I get to meet more people and to learn about how art is produced in a specific condition.
But I also like the perspective that art history offers me. It gives you context, it gives you a longer lens. In a way, it gives you a wider frame of reference — that works do not just emerge quickly or easily but they are shaped by forces from the past. If you have a method to think through the past, through art history, then you can understand and think in a fuller way what is happening in the contemporary work.
Is this route that you’ve taken toward curating still uncommon?
Nowadays, you can enroll in programs and really study curating. So there’s greater professionalization and specialization through academic programs.
Before it was artists who curate, that was the only trajectory. And then came the point art historians curated — that was my time.
Of course, each type of practice has its own virtues and limitations.
I like my practice because it benefits from a larger understanding of contexts.
Sometimes, because I am an art historian, I can maybe take lesser risks because I want more certainty as art history deals with something quite formal. That’s why, as a curator, it loosens me up a bit.
Contemporary art is like, in the context of grammar — a present progressive tense, it’s still happening. So I am given the motivation to be relaxed on certain rules, because it’s still in progress.
Can you take us back to how your early career and the moment or event that actually led you to curating contemporary art pieces?
I was a film reviewer in university before I graduated, on my last year. I wrote for [the now defunct] Midweek.
I think it also trained me not only to look at films but also to write as a regular thing so I am quite okay with deadlines because I was trained [that way].
And then I also reviewed theater and then slowly I became much involved in art history because I thought there was not much discourse in film, that it was more exciting in visual arts.
I graduated from the university in 1990. I was a People Power freshman. That decade after graduation, I practiced as a teacher, a writer, critic and then much later as an art historian.
Curating came later, around maybe in the late ‘90s. The first thing I curated was something from Ayala Museum. The curator at the time was Nina Baker and she asked me to curate a small space at the old Ayala. I remember the title was Paper Over (in 1998).
And then the next curatorial work, I was asked by the Asia Pacific Triennial to be a collaborating curator in 1999 in Brisbane.
In 2000, I was involved in this large project called “Under Construction” which gathered curators from Asia under 40. That was a more extensive engagement that was initiated by Japan Foundation in Tokyo. I curated a local exhibition in Manila and participated in an omnibus curation in 2002.
So the period of my early curatorial work was from ’98 to 2000.
Can you bring us behind the scenes and describe the process of curating and its complexities?
First of course is conceptualization. It’s a thinking process, you think through why you are curating something.
In conceptualization, you have to remember you are also part of the world of ideas that may not be just confined to art but ideas about politics, gender and all sorts of things. You have to be interested in ideas aside from the fact that you are interested in objects and in practices.
Next, you choose pieces or whatever it is, any material, that you think will flesh out or render your thinking.
In the selection process, of course there is research on artists, you visit their studios, and you learn about what they are doing. In the process, you learn about their contexts. So you go to exhibitions and activities to try to learn the social world of art.
Thirdly, curatorial work involves constant explication, meaning it has to be discoursed, that these are not only objects, they mean something beyond themselves and through themselves. Meanings, implications, theories, ideas, gravitate around the object. So you also have to be, as a curator, attentive to ideas.
As a curator, you too have to participate in producing ideas. So there’s a lot of writing and speaking involved, like talking to peers and colleagues.
Are there instances where you clash with artists whose works you curate?
Of course you cannot prevent everything from happening. There is constant negotiation with artists, you kind of know what will happen. Still, there are unpredictable, intangibles, which you cannot predict.
Contemporary art is about unpredictability so you just have to deal with it as it comes. As such, when it comes, you also curate a situation of response.
For example, if there is a censorship problem [with the work or artist that a curator is dealing] you’d want to discuss it with the artist, you create a situation where you can productively deal with the problem.
Because art work elicits different reactions, right? Some might feel that it is offensive, but not all. So, as a curator, you are responsible to deal with all sorts of reaction. You cannot be paralyzed by the reaction that says it is offensive because not all think that way. You are also responsible to those who are not offended.
Is it hard to break into international curating as a Filipino or as a Southeast Asian?
There is a glass ceiling but more often now someone [from the region] breaks it. People [from other region] are also reaching out [to this part of the world] because, I am sorry to say, the West, is exhausted and depleted, they are now catching up actually with the rest of the world.
So we, the region, should now be in the position of confidence to have a voice.
Can you tell us more about your role as artistic director for the Singapore Biennale?
First and foremost, the artistic director should provide the overall general vision of the direction that the Biennale should take.
Second, he/she should form a curatorial team because he cannot do it alone. It’s a Biennale of, let’s say around 80 artists, so it’s physically impossible to do it all.
Personally, I wanted to mentor younger curators, millennial curators, so that they also get the chance to curate the Biennale of their time. It’s also for me to learn from their generation, meaning how they think about art today.
Curators will be assigned to artists that he/she will curate. But the overall, I mean how pieces connect to each other, I set that. I also thought about which pieces should come here in what particular venue.
Third, general interface with the public like talking to the press and the public — it’s part of the role of an artistic director.
Other than those three, the artistic director is also in charge of the other programs around the Biennale because exhibition is only one aspect of it. There are also public programs, activations like performances, seminars, conference and even the catalogue.
So there are many moving parts in this mechanism and the director looks into all of these.
For this edition, you chose the title — not a theme — “Every Step in the Right Direction.” Can you explain why you chose a title over a theme, which is traditionally done, and also expound on its message?
I’d like to look at the Biennale as more of an invitation and inspiration that’s why I chose a title and not a theme.
It is an invitation for the public and for the artists to think about the world today and for them also to be inspired, to take action, and to do something about it. That’s why you have to think of the right direction, in relation to the responsibility to take that step. Without that step, you won’t reach the right direction.
The title is lifted from the interview of Salud Algabre who was a revolutionary woman. She was previously a seamstress who joined the Sakdal movement that advocated sovereignty, freedom and emancipation from American colonial rule in the ‘30s.
In the ‘30s, she was tasked to capture a town and she was able to do it for a day but ultimately, they lost to colonial government forces.
Years later, she was asked by a historian, ‘What did you do when the revolution failed?’
And she was quick to correct the historian and said, ‘No uprising fails, each one is a step in the right direction.’
From that line, I crafted the phrase, “every step in the right direction.”
Since you have the hand at choosing the participating artists, did you consciously choose more Filipino artists?
The number of participating Filipinos varies but I think there were more participants in the past actually. I also didn’t like that because I am Filipino, there would be more. I chose the Filipino artists carefully because the title, coming from a Filipino already sends out a strong framework, a Filipino mark.
Did you have any realizations about international and the Philippine art scenes after working for the Singapore Biennale?
That ours is a richer art world, it is more varied, also more unpredictable so there is more variety, just of the sheer population. I mean we have 100 million people [to start with].
But in terms of infrastructure, it is more established here, and also in terms of professionalization of expertise, it is more formalized here.
I am not saying we have no experts or that there are no systems but in terms of like the degree of formalization, it’s higher here.
We have the software [as in the artists], but we don’t have the hardware [the venue].
Intellectually and creatively we are strong but how to realize [and utilize these], sometimes, that’s limited by the capacity of the resources.
What do you say are the satisfactions of art curating?
For you to present artists and let the art find its audience, then for the audience to have this chance to encounter art is a reward in itself. You created a situation of encounter between artwork, artist and public. I mean, not all can do that because you deal with those forces — artwork, space, public, artists. But when you do, that becomes a reward.