On its fifth year of partnership, the Asian Cultural Council Philippines Foundation and Leon Gallery mark another year with vibrant hopes for continued support in promoting the development of Filipino artists. Such unified vision is the core aim of this annual fundraising auction that benefits the ACC Philippine Fellowship Program.

Since 1963, Filipino artists from all art fields are being supported in their pursuit of cultural exchange through research, studies, and residencies anywhere in the United States or any country across Asia through the ACC fellowship grant

On 23 February, at 2 p.m., all roads lead to Leon Gallery for the Asian Cultural Council Art Auction showcasing the best works of Filipino masters, icons and outstanding contemporary artists, including some of the foremost visual artists-ACC grantees.

ACC fellows Ambie Abaño, Anton del Castillo, Noel Soler Cuizon, Dexter Fernandez, Riel J. Hilario, Leeroy New, and Samuel Penaso present exceptional works to form part of the impressive pieces up for auction in a show of solidarity to raise funds for the ACC grants program.

Since 1963, Filipino artists from all art fields are being supported in their pursuit of cultural exchange through research, studies, and residencies anywhere in the United States or any country across Asia through the ACC fellowship grant. Among the luminaries in the ACC alumni list are National Artists Lucresia Kasilag, Jose Maceda and Ramon Santos for music; Jose Joya for visual arts, Alice Reyes for dance; and recently proclaimed stalwart Kidlat Tahimik (project grantee for film). They are joined by some of the notable scholars and leading contemporary and young emerging artists in theater, literature, architecture and other allied arts.

Describing the impact of the ACC fellowship experience, 2006 grantee Anton del Castillo shares, “Not only did the ACC grant take me to various places across the US, but it also took me to a whole other world of art that I wouldn’t have known were it not for ACC. The opportunity to explore various museums across the country left me with knowledge that would prove useful to my practice throughout the years. I may have only stayed in New York for a short while, but the six-month residency provided by the ACC changed my views on art, and hence my life, forever.”

“Malaya” by Ambie Abaño. Other grantees also share the impact of the ACC Fellowship experience.

Noel Cuizon, 1998 grantee, said: “The ACC Fellowship grant delineated the resolution of my lifelong journey as an artist — to further understand my role as a visual arts practitioner and to recognize accountability towards society as an imperative component of art practice. Two decades ago when e-mail was yet unpopular, the fellowship helped me in bridging the gaps between various visual fields while locating a range of art constellations and creative tendencies unimaginable during that time. The experience afforded me with the opportunity to explore possibilities in my artistic investigation as well as re-affirmed the value of essential relations brought about by diverse exposures. What was situated as a continuum of career choices defined advocacies that set new artistic directions. After the ACC episode and other residency programs, I have established myself as a cultural worker/organizer, art administrator, curator and art educator at the same time as maintaining a meaningful contemporary art practice — that encompasses not only painting and mixed-media works but other forms as well like installation and performance art. The over-all impact of the ACC Fellowship program provided me with a firm standpoint and an unsullied paradigm of acumen, idiom and identity.”

“The ACC care about artists and recognize what we do as immensely worthwhile in the service of humanity. Their support to my artistic development was so empowering because it exposed me to new environments and created opportunities to engage with other artists from all over Asia and beyond,” 2011 grantee Ambie Abaño said. “As a result, my six-month ACC funded residency in New York in 2012 was a tremendous life-changing experience because it gave me a broader, deeper sense of myself through my encounters with the ‘other’ and enabled me to become firmly rooted in my beliefs and sensibilities as a Filipina artist.”

“Being a grantee of the Asian Cultural Council to artist residencies in New York and to Malaysia provided me with a sense of context for my practice as a sculptor working with traditional genre with the intent of participating in the discourse of ‘contemporaneity.’ This context was the sum of meetings, networks, encounters, engagements and debates with fellow grantees, curators, peers in the US and in Malaysia, that helped dismantle bias, prejudices that I have acquired in an insular Manila-centric art scene and helped me see other perspectives, challenges and goals in art making on a more global scale. The grant gave me a better vantage point on how to assess my work, the places where they are made and shown and how the highways and marketplaces of ideas and cultural values accrue or subtract from the potency of the artwork,” related 2012 grantee Riel Hilario.

A special preview of the auction pieces starts 20 February at the Leon Gallery, G/F Eurovilla 1, Rufino Corner Legaspi Streets, Legaspi Village, Makati City, while the ACC-Leon Gallery Booth at The Link, await visitors and patrons during the Art Fair Philippines on 21 to 24 February.

For more details, visit www.leon-gallery.com, www.asianculturalcouncil.org or www.artfairphilippines.com.