The 2024 Benilde Open takes flight with ambitious grants

A new player entered the scene of institutional art initiatives in the Philippines. In late January this year, De La Salle-College of St. Benilde (CSB) launched a new grant for Filipino artists, designers, and creatives—the Benilde Open. 

Together with the Best of Benilde, the grant formed half of Benilde Open Design + Art—an initiative dedicated to championing “innovative and collaborative projects across diverse creative disciplines within and outside the school”. The initiative was launched in synergy with De La Salle University and with its exhibition partners the Embassy of Switzerland and the Estate of Heidi Bucher; together with Philippine Airlines, Malayan Insurance, Power Mac Center, and The Sage Group.

The Best of Benilde featured juried student theses from CSB while the ongoing Heidi Bucher exhibition shows sculptures, textiles, and sketches from the Swiss artist. Among all the festivities, the Benilde Open most successfully encapsulated where the College is heading in the future. 

The grant was an open call for proposals from artists, designers, and creatives from all backgrounds to work on unrealized projects. It featured quite a generous funding scheme and platform. Each grantee received up to Php 300,000 in project funding and the chance to exhibit their work in the College’s campus. 

CSB gathered a committee of practicing artists, professionals, and academics unaffiliated with the institution to select the final grantees. The committee included:

• Jonathan Gander, Head of School of Creative Industries, LA SALLE College of Arts, Singapore
• Alexis Glass-Kantor, Curator and Executive Director, Artspace Sydney
• Mara Hermano, VP of Institutional Research and Planning, Boston College, and Former VP of Integrated Planning, Rhode Island School of Design
• Paul Pfeiffer, Internationally Acclaimed Multidisciplinary Artist
• Erwin Romulo, Writer, Editor, Music Producer, and Creative Consultant
• Pauline Suaco-Juan, Former Executive Director, Center for International Trade Expositions
• Ikko Yokoyama, Lead Curator of Design and Architecture, M+ Hong Kong

The judges combed through 324 applications and selected eleven proposals across disciplines, yielding an acceptance rate of 3.4%.

The Benilde Open 2024 Exhibitions

The 11 project awardees of the first Benilde Open were:

• Polymer and Palm: Excerpts of the Tropikalye Index by Nice Buenaventura and Costantino Zicarelli
• Nightingales by RJ Fernandez
• STAKEHOLDING: CHAPTER 1, A Developing Tabletop Game by Lyra Garcellano
• RE-MOVE: Unraveling truths behind the spectacle of indigenous exposition through the contemporary performance lens by Aaron Kaiser Garcia
• Exploring the Use of Philippine Silk in Tausug Pisyabit Weaving by Rambie Lim
• Unraveling Baguio’s Inner Tapestry: A Psychogeographical Exploration by Gabe Mercado 
• Maria, Maria by Lala Monserrat in collaboration with Russ Ligtas, Geric Cruz and Jazel Kristin, along with the LGBTQ Community of Barangay San Miguel in San Antonio, Zambales
• Cosmic Garden by Issay Rodriguez
• Developing Puppetry in the Philippines by Mikayla Teodoro and Benjor Catindig
• CURIOUS: Spotlight on Filipino Sign Language Literature by Michael Vea
• Baluy Manghagdaway: A Functional Installation Art Created in Collaboration with the Umayamnon Community of Barangay Lambagan Mandahican and Mandaing, Municipality of Cabanglasan by Errol P. Balos (SPECIAL MENTION)

The outputs from the winning proposals were scattered across CSB’s Design and Arts Campus (D+A Campus) and the Hub of Innovation for Inclusion (Hi-Fi) buildings. Some projects received ample space, such as an entire foyer or hallway. These projects were also on display alongside the winning student works from the Best of Benilde. 

One of the benefits of mounting the exhibition inside the school was the potential for each work to interact with its immediate surroundings. Michael Vea’s CURIOUS: Spotlight on Filipino Sign Language was inside CSB’s library. This intentional positioning showcased the urgency of these projects. It let viewers see the immediate implications of the work, particularly the significance of Filipino Sign Language (FSL) literature.

Projects such as Nice Buenaventura and Costantino Zicarelli’s Palm & Polymer: Excerpts of the Tropikalye Index and Gabe Mercado’s Unraveling Baguio’s Inner Tapestry: A Psychogeographical Exploration gained from the generous space. Both of these projects dealt with specific interpretations of urban environments, and required more space to fully translate their original contexts to the exhibition. 

But having the projects spread out across the campus also had its drawbacks. Looking for these artworks across multiple floors was time-consuming, especially for first-time visitors to CSB. Signing up for an official tour was a must. 

Standout projects explored community art initiatives while commanding attention in their respective exhibition spaces. Exploring the Use of Philippine Silk in Tausug Pisyabit Weaving focused on informing and educating viewers on the weaving practice in Sulu. Maria, Maria took on a more elegiac approach to discuss topics of gender and trauma.

For Exploring the Use of Philippine Silk in Tausug Pisyabit Weaving, Lim, who specializes in product development of community projects, worked with two weavers from Sulu, Padirna Sanaani and Ruhina Muhaimer. Lim created a short documentary about them, where Sanaani and Muhaimer take the viewers through the process of weaving silk for the first time. In the exhibition space, the artists displayed the looms, string, and other materials used in the weaving process. Seeing the materials next to the documentary added more context through tactility.

On the other hand, Maria, Maria, was poetry as told through haunting images, motion, and material. Monserrat and her collaborators employed symbols and gestures across videos, photography, and sculpture to comment on religion, queer resilience, and trauma. In the exhibition space, the sculptures were hung from the ceiling next to a wall of photographs as the documentary took on an autobiographical slant by showing the reconstruction of everyday objects through casting. While Lim’s project focused heavily on narrative, Maria, Maria was evocative. The artists converted that corner of the D+A Campus into a space for rumination.

The Vetting Process

When the organizers opened applications for the Benilde Open, they stressed the importance of gathering proposals from a variety of creative disciplines. The website stated, “The call further seeks design and art projects marked by an appetite for investigation and experimentation.”

From February to March 2024, the selection committee reviewed hundreds of proposals. “The process of selections was based on several conversations about the merit of each shortlisted proposal,” wrote Dindin Araneta, one of the convenors of the Benilde Open, in an email exchange with the author. Araneta also listed the initiative’s goals, which included “encourag[ing] innovation and collaboration within and across creative disciplines.” 

Most, if not all, awardees had projects encompassing multiple mediums and genres, especially video, sound, and sculpture. A handful of awardees, such as Lim, Monserrat, Vea, and Mercado pursued community projects and collaborated with locals. Several awardees also conducted their projects outside of Metro Manila. Mercado explored Baguio’s landscape; Lim filmed in Sulu; Monserrat tapped community members in Zambales.

In the same email exchange, Araneta disclosed another goal of the grants: “[to] position Benilde as THE school for creative careers.” In addition to cultivating artistic communities in the Philippines, the Benilde Open foregrounded CSB as a destination for those looking to pursue higher education, and consequently a career, in the arts. 

This is further emphasized by how the Best of Benilde, an exhibition of exemplary student theses, shared space with projects from the Benilde Open. This move spotlighted the strengths not only of their students, but also of their faculty and curriculum. The Benilde Open and the Best of Benilde celebrated creativity both inside and outside the classroom.

The beneficiaries of arts grants, residencies, and funding

The Benilde Open, along with similar grants and, by extension, residencies, can lend crucial support to artists and the overall arts scene in the Philippines. 

By providing resources, grants can encourage artists to direct the trajectory of a project and take artistic risks. The crux of the Benilde Open lies in funding unrealized projects and breathing new life into them by giving resources and a platform. Projects such as Maria, Maria displayed the full range of multimedia exploration. 

Grants and residencies, though moreso the latter, also highlight a specific locale’s arts community. By awarding funding to artists and creatives from all over the Philippines, the Benilde Open highlighted different forms of craft and artistry. Unraveling Baguio’s Inner Tapestry: A Psychogeographical Exploration positioned Baguio as a living artwork itself. Exploring the Use of Philippine Silk in Tausug Pisyabit Weaving showcased how Sulu-based practitioners add to the rich narrative and tradition of weaving. 

Residencies also allow artists to live onsite and create works that investigate topics in specific locales. Orange Project’s residency program hosts artists and writers in Bacolod City. During one of its iterations, artist Renz Baluyut created a sculpture based on the experiences of sugarcane farmers in the area. In Palawan-based Butanding Barrio Art Residency, artist Julian Tapales explored the ubiquity of surveillance through mapping a Palawan cave. 

These combined efforts from grants and residencies result in artists being able to take greater leaps in their practices and communities being able to engage in art. Thanks to these initiatives, the future of the art scene in the Philippines holds immense promise.