Annette Hug’s novel “Wilhelm Tell in Manila” follows the life of the Philippine national hero, Jose Rizal through the jungle of words and languages. The ambitious novel essentially attempts to tell the story about how literature changes the world. For Jose Rizal, his attempt to change the world with literature ends in his own death. Rizal is…

As both psychiatrist and revolutionary, Frantz Fanon joined the struggle against French colonialism in the 1950s. Today, countless studies explore his work—yet one question persists: is Fanon more relevant now than ever? In late 1956, Fanon formally enlisted in the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) during Algeria’s war of independence. The gulf between today’s world…

Roberto Bolano channels the many characteristics that made Jorge Borges a great writer in his book, “The Insufferable Gaucho” Borges died in 1986. At about the same time Roberto Bolaño was rising to become the most interesting author of emerging Spanish-language literature. Jorge Borges shares his inexhaustible imagination with Roberto Bolano, which allows him to…

In 1969, Vikram Seth moved from India to London to study. He finds accommodation with his uncle Shanti and his German wife Henny, a Jewish woman. Both got to know each other during Shanti’s studies in Berlin in the 1930s. The relationship of his Uncle and Aunt, which was at first rather distant, gradually deviates…

There is more to what is being said in Rodrigo Hasbun’s novel that reviews the convulsion of Latin America In Rodrigo Hasbun’s (Cochabamba, Bolivia 1981) The Affections, it is convenient to emphasize, from the outset, the extreme conciseness of a prose that suggests more of what is being accounted. What is said and what remains…

The 2017 Literature Nobel Prize is awarded to the writer Kazuo Ishiguro. He was born in Japan in 1954 and moved to England at the age of five with his parents. I previously reviewed his work “The Buried Giant” on this blog. An article on the occasion of his winning the prize will follow.

This article I wrote in anticipation of Jason Tecson’s two man show with Syrian artist Thaer Maarouf at Sana Gallery – Singapore. The sculptures of Jason Tecson speaks about reality in the same way nightmares do: through concrete manifestation of symbols found in them. His works are not images but fabrications, which in an analogous…

By: Camille Anne M. Arcilla – @inquirerdotnetPhilippine Daily Inquirer / 02:06 AM September 30, 2013 “Dirty, poorly dressed and filled with love” could be the exact description of Filipino artists—the reason why a group of young ones had to put it in visuals. “‘Dirty, poorly dressed, and filled with love’ is a somewhat stereotypical description…

When Joseph Tecson first painted in prison, he was doubtful he would make something good out of it. He painted initially at the insistence of his brother and because there was an urge to pass time productively. That was the simple reason. Each week, throughout the four years and twenty days he was incarcerated for…

Jigger Cruz / Depth Circus   Jigger Cruz explores the primitive memory of the figurative in contemporary painting. He is returning to modernism’s layers of subdued, scarcely fashioned hasty urges to tear down the tenets of precedent movements. When such an attempt is filtered through an ironic, neo-expressionist approach, it’s even more difficult for the…

We are now installing beds in every studio in light and space. Not mainly for the convenience of sleeping inside the studio but rather to make the artists work on their projects as soon as they get up and until the very last hour. So they would have plenty of time to dream of exhibitions…