Where Bathala wears a gas mask: Steampunk worlds of Nestor Perez Ong

Gateway Gallery opens one of its exhibit halls to a brass-bound archive of dreams with “The Philosophical Tales of the Ancient Raconteur: The Steampunk Surrealism of Nestor Perez Ong,” a one-man exhibition by artist Nestor Perez Ong, leader of the Steampunk Indio Collective.

In this exhibition, Ong draws from visions that first came to him in sleep — fragments of memory, myth and imagined histories that refuse to remain buried. He rebuilds these visions through the lens of steampunk, creating a world where clockwork maidens harvest fields of copper, a gas-masked Malakas and Maganda are awakened by an automaton raven emerging from a copper bamboo stem, and Baroque churches sprout smokestacks and rivets.

The result is not mere nostalgia, but a powerful collision of worlds: precolonial spirit, colonial memory, and industrial futurism welded onto the same canvas.

Each of Ong’s surreal works unfolds like a raconteur’s tale. The narratives meander, exaggerate and reveal, as if a grandfather were telling stories to his grandchildren inside a bamboo hut fitted with Tesla coils. In Ong’s universe, Bathala wears a gas mask, while Noli Me Tangere is reimagined in a world of sentient mice, with characters such as Crisostomo Ibarrat and Maria Clarat.

By filtering folklore through steam, brass and steel, Ong asks what our ancestors might have built had empire not interrupted their craft. His steampunk is not simply borrowed from Victorian London. It is indigenized and rooted in bamboo, abaca and the heat of a tropical forge. His machines leak, hiss and sweat like living things.

As leader of the Steampunk Indio Collective, Ong positions the exhibition as both art and manifesto. These are philosophical tales because every panel poses questions about agency, memory and invention.

What if our revolutions had airships? What if our epics ran on steam? The Ancient Raconteur does not give easy answers. Instead, he offers blueprints disguised as dreams, inviting viewers to keep building. In Ong’s hands, steampunk ceases to be merely a costume or aesthetic. It becomes a critique, a way of retelling the stories of a nation while reimagining the tools with which it might shape its future.

“The Philosophical Tales of the Ancient Raconteur: The Steampunk Surrealism of Nestor Perez Ong” will run from 16 to 22 May at the Small Room of Gateway Gallery. The artist reception will be held on 16 May, 3 p.m. Gateway Gallery, the art museum of Araneta City, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is free. It is located on the fifth floor of Gateway Tower, Araneta City, Cubao, Quezon City.