Art Fair Philippines 2025 Wants to Redefine Our Relationship With Art
This art fair in the Philippines is demanding we wake up, pay attention, and ask ourselves: What is art supposed to do?
Art is not just something we look at. It is something we live alongside. It seeps into the quiet spaces of our lives, the way a familiar song sneaks up on us in a café or the way an old photograph holds more weight than we’re willing to admit.
And yet, most of the time, we walk past it. Another framed picture, another fleeting image.
This year, Art Fair Philippines wants to disrupt that. From February 21 to 23, it lands in the heart of Makati’s Ayala Triangle, not quietly, not politely, but with a kind of insistence: What if you really saw this?
As protest, as pulse
Artists from Austria to Vietnam, names familiar and new, all converging in this moment, in this city, at this time.
The big names—Manny Garibay, Jezzel Wee, Manuel Ocampo—share space with voices still shaping themselves. Spain’s SpY Studio is here, too, whispering the same thing: art is never neutral. It always means something.
But don’t mistake significance for solemnity. ArtFairPH/Digital leans into the chaos.
Chia Amisola’s KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN (That’s what you get for using the computer!) feels like an inside joke with the internet, a love letter to bad WiFi and overworked laptops. Meanwhile, Isaiah Cacnio takes light and movement and turns them into something weighty, like a dream you can’t quite shake.
Are we paying attention?
This isn’t about collectors or critics. It’s about you. About whether you notice, whether you let yourself be moved. Since 2013, ArtFairPH/Talks has been asking these kinds of questions: Who gets to make art? Who gets to own it? And what does it mean to create in a world where everything is already for sale?
ArtFairPH/Film won’t let you stay still, either. Kono Basho by Jaime Pacena sits in the space between belonging, not belonging, what we know about ourselves, and what we don’t.
So maybe this isn’t just an art fair. Maybe it’s a question, or an invitation, or both. Maybe it’s telling us to look more closely. To pay attention. To be the kind of people who let art get under their skin.
For the full lineup, visit www.artfairphilippines.com or follow Art Fair Philippines on Facebook and Instagram. Whatever you do, don’t just stand there. Look closer.
Courtesy Art Fair Philippines
Special thanks Pau Bautista
