Tie a String Around the World- Philippine Pavilion: : 56th International Art Exhibition- La Biennale di Venezia 2015 / Editor: Patrick D. Flores

Titled Tie A String Around the World, the curatorial proposal by Patrick Flores was chosen as the exhibition for the Philippine Pavilion, at the 56th Venice Art Biennale in 2015. It marked the return of the Philippines as a participating country in the Venice Biennale after its first participation in 1964. The exhibition developed around the works of 4 artists: The film entitled Genghis Khan (1950) by Manuel Conde and Carlos Francisco Jose Tence Ruiz’s art work Shoal Manny Montelibano’s multi-channel piece A Dashed State. The Philippines is back with the theme “Tie A String Around the World” to the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, after a 50-year hiatus. “Tie A String Around the World” revolves around the concept of the Philippines as a tropical heterotopia, a real space of crises where utopia – the myth of civilization and the project of progress – is simultaneously represented, negotiated and/or subverted. Emerging from the desire to explore, problematise, and understand the political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental contexts of the late 20th century up to the 21st century that engendered both the development and devastation of the nation and the gathering and dispersal of its peoples through contemporary visual practice, the Philippine Pavilion in Venice signifies not necessarily suspension and fragmentation, but a dialectical dynamism.

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