SILVERLENS is proud to announce its participation in SOUTH SOUTH, a new innovative online platform, community, and anthology for galleries, artists, curators, and collectors invested in the Global South. Hosting events year-round, SOUTH SOUTH’s portal aims to address the imbalance in the global cultural framework by providing a means to explore alternative art centres within a broader geopolitical context.

The initiative’s launch event, SOUTH SOUTH VEZA brings together over fifty galleries from across five continents to present a varied, dynamic, de-centred world view of contemporary art production. Taking place from 23 February through 7 March 2021, SOUTH SOUTH VEZA will be a digital hybrid of a live selling event and an Online Viewing Room (OVR). On the occasion of this first edition, the gallery will be featuring works by three of its represented artists in a presentation entitled Our Islands.

For the inaugural SOUTH SOUTH 2021, Silverlens (Manila) presents three influential Southeast Asian artists: Martha Atienza, Norberto Roldan, and Pow Martinez. Working with a wide range of media and materials – from Atienza’s videos to Roldan’s assemblages of found objects and textiles, to Martinez’s oil paintings – they represent the diversity of practice across our art communities that are grassroots, sometimes chaotic, and always vibrant.

Aside from the Covid-19 pandemic that grounded life to a halt in 2020, the Philippine islands, where the artists reside, lies within the global sweet spot for natural calamities. The Taal Volcano eruption, devastating floods from a series of typhoons, one of which was called nationally called Ulysses, and a Christmas Day earthquake were all within the year’s calendar. This annual roll call of nature’s signs is a reminder that life on the islands is always on the brink.

Based between Bantayan Island in the Visayan Sea and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Martha Atienza’s practice explores installation and video as a way of documenting and questioning issues around environment, community, and development. Her work tends to be collaborative in nature; she works with people from different backgrounds and expertise, as well as with residents of Bantayan Island, where her family is from. Their collective narratives are intricately woven into issues such as environmental change, displacement, cultural loss, governance, and socio-economic disparities.

One of the pillars of contemporary art in Southeast Asia, Norberto Roldan’s practice is rooted in social and political issues. His installations, assemblages and paintings of found objects, text fragments, and found images address issues surrounding everyday life, history, and collective memory. His artistic process engages with ways in which material objects are re-appropriated in another context. In 2000, Roldan co-founded Green Papaya Art Projects, which remains to be the longest-running independent and multi-disciplinary platform in the country. Green Papaya is incidentally, the Asian beneficiary of SOUTH SOUTH’s Live Selling Event, VEZA.

A highly-sought artist of his generation, painter Pow Martinez makes colorful works that are known for their characters in landscapes of disintegration and urban scenarios. These paintings are based on the endless stream of social media #selfies, #throwbacks, #nofilters, and #blessed. They are parodies of life under lockdown – emotional, alive, rich.

Coming from the Philippines, where nature must be treated with utmost respect, the survival instinct and push to continue making art against all odds characterize these artists. Silverlens presents three recent videos by Martha Atienza, amplifying the link between climate change and migration; a prime selection of pieces by Norberto Roldan; and new paintings by Pow Martinez.

Words by Isa Lorenzo

Born to a Dutch mother and Filipino father, Martha Atienza (b. 1981, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Bantayan Island, Philippines) has moved between the Netherlands and the Philippines throughout her life. Constantly oscillating between these two cultures has had a profound influence on Atienza’s focus as an artist.

Atienza’s practice explores installation and video as a way of documenting and questioning issues around environment, community and development. Her work is mostly constructed in video, of an almost sociological nature, that studies her direct environment. Often utilizing technology in the form of mechanical systems, Atienza explores the immersive capacity of installation in generating critical discourse. Her work tends to be collaborative in nature, working with people from different backgrounds and expertise as well as residents of Bantayan Island, where her family is from, whose narratives are intricately woven into issues such as environmental change, displacement, cultural loss, governance and socio-economic disparities.

Since graduating with a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Academy of Visual Arts and Design in the Netherlands, Atienza has exhibited internationally at various art spaces, galleries, and video festivals. In 2017, Atienza won the Baloise Art Prize in Art Basel (Switzerland) for her work, Our Islands 11°16’58.4_N 123°45’07.0_E. In 2016, she was one of the five shortlisted artists for the Benesse Art Prize (Japan) in the Singapore Biennale. In 2015, Atienza was awarded the Thirteen Artists Awards by the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Martha Atienza has also had residencies all over the world: in 2005, she was a part of Kuvataideakatemia’s art program in Finland. In 2016 and 2012, she won the prestigious Ateneo Art Award with studio residency grants in Liverpool, Melbourne, New York and Singapore. In 2016, she was the recipient of the first Mercedes Zobel/Outset Residency at Gasworks in London. In 2018, Atienza was a part of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art’s residency program in Singapore.

Norberto Roldan’s (b. 1953, Roxas City, Philippines; lives and works in Manila, Philippines) practice is rooted in social and political issues. His installations, assemblages and paintings of found objects, text fragments and found images address issues surrounding everyday life, history and collective memory. His artistic process engages with ways in which material objects are re-appropriated in another context. He graduated with a degree in BA Philosophy from St. Pius X Seminary and took his BFA in Visual Communication from the University of Santo Tomas. He is represented in several landmark surverys like No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum (2013); Between Declarations and Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia Since the 19th Century, National Gallery Singapore (2015); SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, National Art Centre Tokyo (2017); and Passion and Procession: Art of the Philippines, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2017). Roldan founded Black Artists in Asia in 1986, a group with a socially and politically progressive practice. In 1990 he initiated VIVA EXCON (Visayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference), the longest running biennale in the Philippines. He co-founded Green Papaya Art Projects in 2000 which remains to be the longest-running independent and multi-disciplinary platform in the country.

Pow Martinez's (b. 1983; lives and works in Manila, Philippines) paintings belie their grotesque subject matter with the indelibly beautiful surfaces and a wide-ranging, daring use of color. Mutants, monsters, demons, deviants, and freaks lurch, sit, and appear to transform amidst weirdly lit landscapes or disintegrating urban scenarios, or emerge from a painterly graffito mess, but, as his more abstracted works insist, Martinez’ ability to render intriguing relationships between forms and surfaces ensure his works are endlessly compelling—an experience akin to a beautiful nightmare.

Martinez is a recipient of the Ateneo Art Awards for his exhibition 1 Billion Years at West Gallery, Philippines. He exhibits internationally and has worked with different media, including sound. His recent exhibitions include City Prince/sses at Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2019) ; WASAK! Reloaded in Arndt, Singapore (2016); and WASAK! in Arndt, Berlin (2016). Martinez has also held a number of solo shows in major galleries in Manila, the most recent of which is Sustainable Anxiety (2020) in SILVERLENS. Early in 2018, Martinez had his first solo exhibition in Indonesia. Titled Aesthetic Police, the exhibition is an outcome of his month- long residency program at OPQRStudio in Bandung.

SOUTH SOUTH is an online community, an anthology, an archive and a resource for artists, galleries, curators and collectors invested in the Global South. The platform offers a repository and a space for new, shared value systems centred on community, collaboration and exchange. It is a central portal to experience the programmes and artist profiles of galleries within and dedicated to the Global South. It will host year-round events and seeks, during these tumultuous times, to address an imbalance in the global cultural framework by providing a means to explore a de-centred art world, within a broader geopolitical context. In the features section, the platform maintains an ongoing interview-based editorial component, including conversations, essays and other texts on current events and significant shows in and about the Global South. In the archive section, SOUTH SOUTH facilitates a community-built archive highlighting selected seminal exhibitions, texts and moments about modern and contemporary art in the Global South at galleries, nonprofits and museums, as well as archived interview-based editorial and artist profiles. Content of the site is established through contributions from key artists, writers, curators, nonprofit organisations and gallerists. SOUTH SOUTH maintains an ongoing programme, and its launch event, SOUTH SOUTH VEZA, brings together 50+ galleries from more than 40 cities spread across 30 countries and 5 continents, presenting a more holistic world-view of contemporary art.