From the 7th Nakanojo Biennale to the Cultural Center of the Philippines

THIS 14 November 2019, Thursday, 6pm, the Cultural Center of the Philippines unveils the work of visual artists Mervy Pueblo and Atsuko Yamagata from the recently concluded 7th international art festival called the Nakanojo Biennale in Japan.

The CCP invites visitors to look into the insights of the artists in this exhibition who address historical, contemporary and societal specters.

Pueblo and Yamagata, visual artists based in Manila, met, created and exhibited their works at the biennale that was held in Japan last September 2019.

Working both individually during their artist in residency of the biennale, Pueblo and Yamagata realized projects that respond to the physical and nonphysical realm.

Pueblo’s installation is interjected with coded references, creating socially charged mysterious draperies that function as a portrait of our contemporary reality.

Yamagata playfully explores animist processes and presents materialistic definitions of the immaterial just like how one’s journey is recorded by one’s own footprint. Transcendental offers an immersive experience that sets the space for an examination of one’s own values and of the indelible tracks that continues even after one’s presence is relinquished.

The exhibit Transcendental will have its opening on 14 November, 6pm, at the CCP’s Bulwagang Carlos V. Francisco (Little Theater Lobby). The exhibition will run until 9 February 2020. Exhibit viewing hours are Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm. Hours are extended until 10pm on days with evening performances at the CCP Main Theater.  For more information, contact the Visual Arts and Museum Division, Production and Exhibition Department at (632) 88321125 loc. 1504/1505 and (632) 88323702, mobile (0917-6033809), email ccp.exhibits@gmail.com or visit www.culturalcenter.gov.ph.

About the artists

Atsuko Yamagata

Born 1982 in Sapporo City, Hokkaido, Japan, Yamagata is a self-taught practicing visual artist since 2006 with a B.A. degree from Foreign Studies Program of Tokyo University majoring in Indonesian language: Southeast Asian Cultural Studies. In 2012 she entered Musashino Art University in Tokyo, but withdrew after a year as she moved to the Philippines. Yamagata has numerous solo exhibitions in 2018: Uncontrolled Artificiality at Finale Art File, Born Softly at MO_Space, Belongingness at West Gallery, and in 2017: Breathing, Breeding, Blowout, at Artinformal, and Borrowed Scenery at Underground gallery, and Made Roots Here at Hotel Nikko Sapporo. On the same year she participated to the 6th Nakanojo Biennale in Gunma Prefecture (Japan) as resident-artist and exhibitor. She has been participating in numerous exhibitions mainly in the Philippines, but has exhibited internationally: Japan (from 2012-2019), Indonesia (2016) and Singapore (2018 and 2015).

Mervy Pueblo

Born in Quezon City in 1982, Pueblo graduated from Minneapolis College of Art and Design with an MFA degree under the flagship of the Philippine-American Education Foundation and Fulbright Scholarship in 2013. She has received several awards from different institutions such as the Award for Continuing Excellent Service: for Visual Arts and Art Education by the Metrobank Foundation Inc. (2019 PH), AICAD Post graduate Teaching Fellowship by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design MN, USA (Nomination, 2016); Thirteen Artist Awards (2015 CCP, PH), Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Award (2013 USA), Ateneo Art Awards (Finalist, 2012 PH), the Metrobank Art and Design Excellence: Sculpture Competition (Special Citation 2006, and Finalist, 2007 to 2010 PH), and Recognition of Talented Youth in Arts and Culture conferred by the office of the Pasig City Mayor (2006). Pueblo had solo exhibitions at Gotanda Community Center, Gunma, Japan (Coming Home, 2019), Artinformal, MM, PH (Fearless, 2014), Bliss on Bliss, NY, USA (Capital Values, 2013), Northrup King, MN, USA (Expectation Kits, 2013), MCAD Library Gallery, MN, USA (Remember to Forget, 2011), and at the Black Room, Whittier Studios, MN, USA (Project Mediating Stone, 2011). Moreover she has participated in numerous group exhibitions and symposiums, locally and internationally such as; Japan 2019, 2018, 2016, 2012 and 2009; Malaysia 2018 and 2016; Singapore 2017 and 2014; France in 2014; the United States of America in 2011 to 2013; South Korea in 2011, 2010 and 2008; Russia in 2008; and Vietnam in 2007. She continues to work at her studio in Rosario, Cavite.