Between Grief and Hope, 
an Archipelago
MONO8 Gallery
Manila

The idea that everything is connected lies at the core of radical imagination. But to tap into the power of this belief, one must investigate first the nature of these relations: who are we connected to, and in what ways? These questions echoed across “Between Grief and Hope, an Archipelago,” an exhibit that brought together 17 Filipino artists seeking to understand how they are bound to each other, to the land and the waterways, and to the histories that unite them. Set within the framework of archipelagic thinking (a theory conceived by Caribbean writer Edouard Glissant arguing that archipelagos are sites where restrictive notions of nation, border, and individuality unravel) the exhibition did not aim to present a unitary vision of the relational fabric of life. Instead, it was steeped in inconsistencies, allowing underlying tensions to emerge and effect exchanges among the myriad works.