What if, while in Singapore, we turn our eyes around, our pupils to the backs of our sockets; where would we be? Would it be Manila and its hodgepodge urban landscape that we see? Peering through a looking glass in Manila, would we find ourselves in Singapore, the city of gardens that Manila could have been, nuestro perdido eden – our lost Eden? In 1896, Philippine national hero – physician and poet José Rizal of mixed indigenous Filipino and Chinese, as well as Spanish and Japanese ancestry – bid his final farewell before his execution with an untitled poem written in Spanish and hidden in a cocinilla or small alcohol stove to be smuggled out of prison. Later named “Mi último adiós” (My Last Farewell), the words nuestro perdido Eden (our Eden lost) in the first stanza imagine an originary homeland that one yearns to recover, a utopia that has been lost. This is a group show of 13 emerging Philippine artists based in Metro Manila.
