viva excon 2025

Today marks the opening of the 2025 VIVA ExCon (Visayas Islands Exhibition and Conference), the longest-running, artist-run biennale in Southeast Asia. This year, Kalibo, Aklan hosts the gathering under the theme “Sádsad Panáad.” It ends on November 23, 2025. 

I’m not attending this edition, but somehow I’m still there through an “Island Report.” My gratitude to VIVA ExCon Negros Island Coordinator and Researcher Ma Isabel Gutang and to videographer-documenter Ryly for reaching out and recognizing the NMP-Dumaguete as a partner to the region’s creatives. I deeply appreciate their alignment with a principle we hold close, which is art matters most when it considers how it empowers and improves the lives of people, especially those in the grassroots and indigenous communities who often carry the stories that shape our cultural identity.

I had the chance to be part of VIVA ExCon in November 2018 in Roxas City, Capiz, and it was an experience that stayed with me. It opened my eyes to how art thrives outside the usual “centers” of the industry. One important realization is that the artistic practice in the Visayas is a delicate balance of production, appreciation, and, ideally, fair transaction. These initiatives are largely artist-led and deeply connected to local communities. You rarely see that kind of authenticity and reciprocity in galleries!

Thanks as well to writer, visual artist, and fellow Bohol Climate Walker Liza Macalandag and to the National Museum representatives Harriet June Tubil, Julie Bee Unlayao, and Bryan Noel Marzona for suddenly sending photos from the opening this afternoon. If not for them and their surprise updates, I wouldn’t have known that the convention had already begun. 

[ More photos here ]