A heart for the arts

Art comes second nature for Carlo Pineda, growing up in a family who’s very much exposed to it.

Pineda is the founder of a creative multi-channel platform called Art House, dedicated to celebrating Filipino heritage through art, travel and unique retail experiences. This initiative is committed to making art accessible for all while promoting the true essence of being Filipino on a global scale.

“Pinoy’s got talent, right? It’s very cliché but I always say it and everyone laughs at me when I say it,” Pineda tells DAILY TRIBUNE’s Pairfect show.

For Pineda, arts and culture are very important and are very strong voices for the Filipino people and the global economy.

Art House, which started in 2022, has done around eight shows to date. Pineda, whose core business is construction, is proud that it is taking a life of its own.

“It started as a passion project. Now it’s more commercially demanding and viable,” he said.

Art House is not a foundation, not an art dealer, not an exhibitor nor it is a gallery but rather a platform for Filipino talent.

“What we’re executing is very visual. And that’s, I guess, for the simple reason that I’m exposed to that kind of art,” he said.

Art House always programs its shows around talking about Philippine culture. Its recent show Lakbay, which talked about the Philippine diaspora, featured important post-war contemporary artist Nena Sagil.

“She lived that Philippine diasporic life,” Pineda said.

Sagil migrated to France after the war and has stayed there since then. She was able to establish herself in the community abroad. Fast forward to today, it resonated very well with the nine artists that were invited to the show.

Art House wants to develop a new market of patrons. Since it deals the contemporary art scene, it believes that it can tap a younger market and hopefully able to gain traction, therefore allowing them to further support talented Filipinos all over the world.

“At the same time, what’s very important is a portion of it is the cultural exchange that we have with the Filipino artists that we’re collaborating with. We have artists that’s from the UK, Berlin, the US. It allows us now to do exchanges in terms of talent and execution with the communities that they’re in. We can bring their talent here in the Philippine market,” he shared.

Yet the journey isn’t one without challenges.

“Like any show, there’s always logistical concerns. Usually, 50 percent of the time of what you planned is not exactly what transpires,” Pineda highlighted. “I think that just taught us to work with what we have and determine what are the things that we have done that we need improvement on.”

As a platform, Arthouse handles logistics, securing the properties it works with, handles public relations and marketing. It also handles a lot of administration and back-off logistics needed. For example, having these nine artists from all over the world is one thing on the list. But getting all their pieces ready for the show is a whole other aspect.

It does take a village to mount a show. The Art House team is broken down in different departments. One is supply chain and logistics side, the other for mounting and setup, supply, sales, marketing, social media, and project management.

“One of the things that’s an important part of our equation is that I wanted to also make art

available for the community. And that’s our way of educating the younger generation around because we anchored it around sustainable art. It becomes very interesting for the community and for the children to explore, there’s art in garbage or there’s art in repurposing materials that are supposed to be trash. Discarded,” Pineda explained.

As you educate that market, it becomes part of their lives. They will seek to make sure that it is something that they would want to not pursue, but at least have access to.

“I want to kind of democratize it, so to speak, that will allow the market, the younger market to start their art investment. It can be as small as P500 pesos P1,000 because art can come in different forms. Don’t think that art is for the elite. It is not. That’s one of the reasons why Art House is also coming up with the community art because it’s free. They should start by exposing themselves to any form of art. Whether that be in the community or you need to visit a certain area that’s known for the art or even visit the museums that we have around the country. So we have a few that are there. It’s not expensive,” Pineda ended.