Mid-February is always a special time in the city. The air is a little cooler, and the buzz of back-to-back events fills the atmosphere. While Arts Month has ended with the culmination of Art Fair Philippines 2025, the celebration of art continues. With stunning installations and pop-ups across the city, there’s no shortage of exciting concepts to explore.
The team behind Eletom has narrowed down their favorites.
Spy Studio’s Barrier Tape
Situated near Ayala Triangle Park, the anonymous Spanish muralist in collaboration with Instituto Cervantes and the Embassy of Spain in the Philippines, has reimagined Barrier Tape, a kinetic and sound sculpture composed of barrier tape fragments. This installation is part of an ongoing series that transforms everyday urban objects into hypnotic, immersive experiences.
Barrier Tape decontextualizes a familiar element used to regulate movement, turning it into a dynamic, ever-shifting surface that visitors can traverse. Within the piece, the repeated patterns induce a transitory sense of disorientation, while the suspended tape sways with the wind, creating rhythmic, wave-like motions and an unpredictable soundscape.
Olivia d’Aboville’s Wonderland of Lights
French-Filipino artist Olivia d’Aboville’s Wonderland of Lights returned, building upon her famous installations, 90 Giant Dandelions, a concept that toured across Europe, making stops in Portugal, United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. This time, d’Aboville collaborated with The Art House to bring her exhibit to the center of the Ayala Circuit Mall.
This iteration takes inspiration from the late Nena Saguil, a trailblazing Filipino modernist painter. As part of Lakbay, d’Aboville’s installation honors Saguil’s legacy by arranging the illuminated dandelions in swirling, circular formations reminiscent of the artist’s signature style.
Jefrë’s Talking Heads
Filipino-American visual artist Jefrë brought over his Talking Heads series in collaboration with the Art House with the installation at the upper ground level of the Ayala Circuit Mall. Jefrë’s exhibition featured a group of suspended plastic vacuum-shaped heads illuminated by brightly colored neon lights. Each light represented an affirmation written in different languages. At the same time, dancers glided underneath the lights, he sought to celebrate individuality through this work while emphasizing the need for a collective experience.
Fotomoto and Neal Oshima’s Camera Obscura
Foto Moto PH partners up with acclaimed photographer Neal Oshima for a photography exhibit that shows the evolution of photography. Located at the sunken garden of Greenbelt Mall, The camera obscura is an early optical device that projects an inverted image through a small hole or lens, serving as a precursor to modern photography.
Kim Borja’s The Words You Speak Become the Home You Live In
The Words You Speak Become the Home You Live By, by visual artist Kim Borja, was a mini house positioned at the center of the shops and restaurants. The quaint structure appeared simple, but those who followed their curiosity and entered—mainly children, unsurprisingly—discovered a colorful home full of meaning.
Serving as “an invocation, invitation, and a quiet warning,” the installation was built on images and language that had “the power to shelter or destroy,” the artist stated. The work illuminated the silent struggles of mental health.
