Artists’ Homage to the Santo Ñino

CEBU, Philippines — It’s an exhibit that’s more than a creative presentation, it doubles as the exhibiting artists’ homage to the Santo Niño de Cebu.

“Sto. Niño: A Homage,” which opened on January 13, runs until the end of the Sinulog 2018 season, at the Art Center of SM City Cebu. It gathers the works of artists from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

Mainly threaded to form by a traditional-representational tone, the show primarily features paintings and illustrations that fall in the iconography art classification. These works are presented next to still lifes and lifescapes that embody various facets of life, faith and devotion.

The creative treatment results in a line of artpieces that fall in the contemporary arts class, as the exhibit also features works that embody updated translations of modernist art movements like cubism, figurative expressionism and abstract expressionism.

Outside of its creative and artistic character, the show also enjoins viewers to reflect on the underlying variables that define what faith is – framing faith as a relationship with the Almighty, not as a social obligation to be exactly what one is expected to be.

In more ways than one, the show draws the spotlight on the “message is part of the medium” aspect that’s inherent in the arts – a reminder that action will always speak louder than words; that the possessions that divide one from the other will always take a back seat to how one lives and loves.