ANNUAL contemporary art event Art Fair Philippines is going virtual for the first time when it opens next month, featuring talks and programs designed to take its audience up to speed with the surging popularity of digital art in the global art scene.
Art Fair Philippines 2021 will present programs for the audience to understand the basics of cryptocurrency and its relevance to the art industry. The event will also introduce platforms for fairgoers to connect with artists and gallerists who are part of crypto art community. Art Fair Philippines 2021 will run from May 6 to 15 at www.artfairphilippines.com. Access to the fair is free of charge.
“We feel that we should show art that suits [the online] platform,” said Trickie Lopa, one of the cofounders of Art Fair Philippines alongside Lisa Periquet and Dindin Araneta, during the event’s recent online media launch.
“When we were debating whether or not we should push through with an online fair this year, we knew that we had to do more than simply put up a site for visitors to click on images of art for sale,” Lopa added. “We had to conceptualize an event that will keep to our mission of widening the audience for the visual arts, and of expanding the exposure of the fair visitors to various forms of contemporary art. So, this year’s fair focuses on digital arts.”
In a story published last month by Time magazine, it was said that NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, are having their “big-bang moment.” NFTs are basically digital currencies tied to assets that can be bought, sold and traded. The Time story cited figures from a market tracker web site which showed that collectors and speculators have spent more than $200 million on an array of NFT-based artwork, memes and GIFs between February and March of this year alone.
Not included in that staggering amount is the record-setting sale of an NFT by digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple. Until October, the most Beeple had ever sold a print for was $100. But on March 11, an NFT of his work sold for $69 million at British auction house Christie’s. It was the third-highest price ever fetched by any currently living artist, after Jeff Koons and David Hockney.
“I first came across NFTs and all these digital artworks in June,” said Lopa. “At the height of our lockdown, not doing anything, I attended a conference about NFTs, and I thought, it’s something that the Pinoy audience and the Pinoy artists could really get into. We will make you as familiar with blockchain as possible.”
Art Fair Philippines will be presenting “Welcome to the Metaverse, The NFT 101 Showcase,” under the ArtFairPH/Projects section. Presented by the Bank of the Philippine Islands and cocurated with Cebu-based multidisciplinary think tank and studio Tropical Futures Institute and Filipino digital art space Narra Art Gallery, the showcase is designed to educate and empower creatives, collectors and the general public about the crypto art space globally, as well as to highlight the country’s own strong vibrant crypto community.
“This is what we strive to do each year: to present something new,” said Periquet. “We emphasize to the curators that the audience are not experts, that they’re just being introduced to this. So, it’s all part of the educational thrust of the fair.”
Art Fair Philippines will also debut digital artworks specially commissioned for the ArtFairPH/Film section, presented by Globe Platinum. This section of the fair is developed in partnership with Daata, a digital platform that commissions original digital artworks by established and emerging artists, allowing viewers to stream or download high-quality digital artworks on any device. Art Fair Philippines and Daata will showcase digital artworks by new media and contemporary artists Jeremy Couillard and Petra Cortright, and Keiken, a collaborative practice co-founded by artists Tanya Cruz, Hana Omori, and Isabel Ramos.
Rounding out this year’s digital art focus is a special presentation of the six winners of the Julius Baer Next Generation Art Prize. The brand recently launched the inaugural competition for Southeast Asian artists, with a focus on the digital image, recognizing it as a medium of the future.
Open to Southeast Asian artists from 18 to 40 years old, submissions were accepted from November 5, 2020, to February 28, 2021. The prize rewards the top 3 winners in two categories: Still Image (e.g. digital photography) and Moving Image (e.g. video art), with a total of $60,000 in cash prizes.
Are NFTs the future of contemporary art?
WITH such prominent emphasis on NFTs in this year’s fair, the organizers shared their thoughts on where it figures in the future of the art industry.
“I don’t believe it’s the only future for art,” Periquet said. “It is there in the future but, of course, alongside the more seemingly conventional and traditional systems that we have. It’s just very interesting to know about it because they have become really a disruptor in the art world so everybody’s interested. And it’s interesting to see if that disruption will have a long-lasting effect.”
“I think it is one of the futures,” Araneta added. “It’s definitely here to stay because of the need. It is something that came about because of the pandemic, so I think it’s fulfilled the need for a lot of people in terms of how art responds to the times.”
‘Artists still want to show their work’
ART Fair Philippines 2021 online follows the 2020 and 2021 editions of Art of the Park, another art event that Lopa, Periquet, and Araneta co-founded and turned into a virtual gathering. The online edition of Art in the Park 2020 proved to be such a success that it yielded more than double of the event’s usual traffic.
“We’ve proven in Art in the Park that we can still enjoy and acquire art online,” Lopa said. “While nothing beats being in the Link [for Art Fair Philippines], interacting with everybody and seeing the pieces live, we try to do what’s best for what we’re all facing right now.”
“We’ve tried very hard to make the access easy and simple. It’s not a very complicated web site, and I hope that comes through,” Periquet added. “Artists still want to show their works and people also want to buy works of art.”
Aside from the focus on digital art, 43 exhibitors from the Philippines and abroad will showcase artworks through their online viewing rooms, which will include videos produced in collaboration with Globe Studios.
There will also be a new section called ArtFairPH/Residencies, an artist residency program project in partnership with Bleeding Heart Rum Corp., the makers of Don Papa Rum. The program is open to all Filipino artists across all disciplines. Five artists selected based on their submitted portfolios will be paired with art spaces and galleries from different parts of the Philippines. The resulting artists’ projects will be presented at Art Fair Philippines 2022.
Other programs for this year’s Art Fair Philippines are 10 Days of Art; a special exhibit for ArtFairPH/Photo, featuring Paris-based Filipino photographer Ding Panganiban and his ambrotype collodion process; and a healthy dose of ArtFairPH/Talks, Open Studios, and Online Tours.
More information on the program and schedule of activities of Art Fair Philippines 2021 can be found at www.artfairphilippines.com, and on Instagram at @artfairph and Facebook at www.facebook.com/artfairph.
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