For the uninitiated, art is oil, pastel, watercolor, or charcoal, and confined within the four corners of a canvas. In the Ateneo Art Gallery—and right outside of it last year—artists Poklong Anading, Marina Cruz, and Impy Pilapil have deemed to go beyond the frame and reach out to their audiences using more interactive and unconventional media.

Marina Cruz

The day before her fifth birthday, Marina Cruz’s grandfather hinted about his birthday present for her. But the next day, he passed away and she never found out what it was.

“Maybe subconsciously, that’s the reason and inspiration for the unearthing I do in my work,” says the 27-year-old University of the Philippines Fine Arts graduate. “I keep searching through old cabinets… looking for that gift that was never revealed.”

This unearthing is in reference to the themes of her works—the history of her family and the memories of the past. In her exhibit Un/fold, Marina displays her talent through casted old dresses that had belonged to her mother and her mother’s twin sister.

“I didn’t know how to make something abstract, like memories, concrete,” she says. “Then I found old baptismal dresses and thought, why not recreate their baptismal ritual?”

Inspired by her grandmother’s dilapidated cabinet and its contents, Marina set out to immortalize the memories and secrets of the people who once wore them.

“I learned things about my family that I never knew before,” she says. “I would never hear these stories in casual conversations with them.”

If not for this, Marina says she’d never know that her family’s house once burned down, or that her youngest aunt felt envy whenever she received hand-me-downs.

Now married to artist Rodel Tapaya, Marina has taken her art to a fulltime career, doing paintings, sculptures, prints, and installations. “A lot of people said it’s difficult to be with a fellow artist. You might become competitive,” she says. “But he’s very supportive. We help each other.”

While she may never unearth her fifth birthday present, Marina knows she has already found her grandfather’s gift. 

Impy Pilapil

In 2008, Impy Pilapil transformed a portion of the Loyola Schools into a colorful wonderland that encouraged people not just to view art, but to interact with it.

Dubbed Interactive: The 12 Senses, the exhibit featured large-scale art pieces, ranging from the 30-feet bamboo structure “Mangrove” to the “Barefoot Trail,” a footpath of sand and marble.

“I’ve often expressed that art should be shared with everyone,” says Impy. “People from different walks of life should be able to partake in the uplifting value gained from, for example, visiting a museum.”

Given the economic situation and the lack of cultural orientation of many Filipinos, Impy says only few get to enjoy such an activity. “For this reason, I am focused on sharing art with the public in open gardens and parks,” she says. “People are treated to something different outside the mundane, day-to-day existence—including watching too much TV!”

“My aim was really to share my work and touch people, to open up their feelings of joy and sense of family, because [it] was for the family,” adds Impy.

This desire drew people from different backgrounds and age groups to the 12 Senses exhibit. For Impy, that was how it should be. “As an artist, I’m fully aware of my responsibility to create art that is not simply appreciated for its aesthetic physicality, but to pursue a higher purpose—to awaken and uplift.”

Aside from re-constructing some pieces from her exhibit last year in the Loyola Schools grounds, Impy is preparing for an even bigger 12 Senses exhibit in the first quarter of next year. The show will be in a bigger venue—the Rizal Park—where a bigger crowd of Filipinos can experience and interact with her art. 

Poklong Anading

“Umiinom ba kayo ng beer (Do you drink)?” is the first question this tall man with curly hair asks me. From there, he raves about Kidlat Tahimik, his favorite national artist.

This is visual artist Poklong Anading and, aboard the famous UP ikot jeepney on the way to Sarah’s (a Pinoy bar and restaurant), this is his own version of casual conversation.

Art and booze is right on the money. His current exhibit is entitled “Drunken Revelry.” For this, Poklong experimented with sound using an Indonesian toy boat lit with fire, creating the sound of metal coming in contact with fire.

Poklong was immersed in a culture very different from his own—a culture of sound— in an artist residency in Bandung, Indonesia. “I don’t really enjoy music but I enjoyed listening to their kind of music,” he says in Filipino.

Yet this is not his first work using sound. In 2000, he collaborated with fellow artists Chico Beltran and Jose Beduya to create “Three Chairs.” The idea came from Poklong’s fascination with the rotating metal chairs in a fine arts studio. Sudden movements would produce a screeching sound, waking people up during, say, a boring class discussion.

“Sound really has an effect on a person’s alertness,” he says in Filipino. His exhibit is about experimenting with the sound and what he can do with the noise. “It’s not a matter of what instrument he should use to create sound.”

Even though his current exhibit experiments with sound, this Fine Arts graduate of the University of the Philippines says drawing comics as a child was the root of his art. “Wala na akong gustong gawin na iba (I don’t want to do anything else),” he says.

Poklong does not have a definition for his art. “I don’t really consider myself as an artist or my works as art. It’s just a part of me—a way of life.”