Tapiserya is the third in a series of art exhibitions held at the Goldenberg Mansion as part of the Art Fair Philippines initiative, 10 Days of Art.
Presented in partnership with Salcedo Private View, the gallery arm of the country’s premier auction house, Salcedo Auctions, the show features the works of contemporary artists Joel Geolamen and Lynyrd Paras.
It brought together the archipelago’s storied terrains, draped on Geolamen’s impressive paintings of Indigenous textiles reflecting their places of origin, and Paras’ embellished figurative expressionism of human subjects. Their collaboration became a seamless tapestry that combined markings, foregrounding notions of identity, territoriality, and ultimately personal and societal recovery.
Geolamen meticulously paints the colors and textures of the country’s Indigenous handwoven textiles and overlays these onto the terrains of particular ethnic groups and ancestral lands in a symbolic territorial and cultural “reoccupation.” His works were the recent highlights of the 2024 Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art and acquired for the permanent collection of the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane.
In this special exhibition, Paras’ artworks revolve around the qualities Filipinos are known for—particularly how we respond to life’s challenges. Filipinos are naturally cheerful and warm. But this trait is not simply a facade; rather, it is power as Filipinos face the challenges of everyday life. In times of darkness, we remain aware and are prepared to face a brighter and better tomorrow.
Joel Geolamen is a visual artist based in Davao. He studied Fine Arts at the Ford Academy of the Arts in Davao City from 1989 to 1996 and has participated in one-man and group exhibitions in the Philippines and overseas. He exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila in 2007 and was featured in the Seeing: Mindanao exhibit in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2010.
Geolamen won the 2013 Philippine Art Awards for Mindanao and represented the country in The Future We Want, an art competition organized by the United Nations offices in Geneva in 2020. He was recently featured in the Salcedo Private View exhibition Paradise Found: Philippine Contemporary Art & Design held in October 2024 in Sydney.
Lynyrd Paras, born in 1982, has been heavily influenced by the creative pulse of the ’90s. Paras is emerging as a distinctive voice in the rising wave of Filipino artists making their mark on the global art scene. Paras’ dark and confining depictions of those around him invite viewers to examine the nature of their relationships and the shared human experience.
Paras’ works have been extensively showcased in Singapore, Malaysia, and New York across the Philippines. He was awarded a grand prize in 2004 GSIS Museum National Painting Competition, Student Category. In 2018, Paras was honored with the prestigious 13 Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, among other accolades.
A graduate of the College of Architecture and Fine Arts at the Technological University of the Philippines, he renders faces with sharpness or starkness, giving them an edge. While the depiction is realist in meticulous detail, it approaches expressionism in its emotional intensity, conveying a raw, almost shocking immediacy.
For this special exhibition, Joel showcased 10 oil on canvas paintings and Lynyrd has 6 paintings and 6 acrylic and resin sculptures. A portion of the proceeds from the art exhibition will be donated to the Girl Scouts of the Philippines.
