Bolts and nuts. Screws and hinges. Slabs of used wood. Metal debris of brass, iron, copper, steel, aluminum and bronze. Every single day, scraps needed at construction sites are carelessly discarded, deemed useless after their initial purpose. Yet, City of Manila Vice Mayor Yul Servo Nieto continuously gathers remnants, as he breathes new life into what many others may have just totally ignored or simply thrown away.

Inspired by the deep-rooted history and heritage, customs and traditions, arts and culture of the Chinese Filipino community, Nieto’s latest exhibit, Directions VI at the foremost property, The Manila Hotel, took his signature metal art to new heights.

This installment is part of an ongoing creative journey, tracing back to Directions I in 2023, his series of exhibits where he delved into engaging narratives and various techniques, with a long-term effect of creating a visual dialogue between the past and the present.

Armed with welding machines, unwieldy automotive paint and fragile stained glass, Nieto refined his metalwork and gave birth to striking sculptures, with a hard-to-achieve uncommon blend of industrial grit and artistic finesse.

Inspired by the deep-rooted history and heritage, customs and traditions, arts and culture of the Chinese-Filipino community, Nieto’s latest exhibit, Directions VI at the foremost property, The Manila Hotel, took his signature metal art to new heights.

This time, he reinvented his work with a fusion of modern Cubism, the intricate art of map-making called cartography, and assemblage art — a technique to construct three-dimensional compositions from found objects.

These approaches were completely in line with Nieto’s artistic philosophy as he welded together crumbs of metal and rejected industrial materials, he crafted obras which shouted an absolutely contrasting tale from their rusty origins.