MoCAF Broadens Its Showcase of Filipino Art With 2025 Iteration 

The Modern and Contemporary Art Festival, or MoCAF, announced its fourth straight year of promoting modern Filipino art with its 2025 edition. The three-day art event showcases galleries, up-and-coming artists, and new projects and institutions that they believe will influence Filipino art in the future. 

Happening at the Marquis Events Place in BGC, Taguig, MoCAF will have over “fifty distributors representing two hundred different artists,” which includes both local and international galleries, according to festival director Colleen Wong. Nearly thirty different artisans will also grace the three-day event, providing a venue for independent creators to platform their goods. 

“We at MoCAF challenge ourselves to introduce something new every year, making MoCAF bigger, but still very inclusive, staying true to one of the pillars we started with,” Wong said during the launch. 

Spotlight to Local Galleries, Small and Big

Different galleries have been confirmed to be participating in MoCAF this year, from known entities like Galerie Stephanie, Village Art Gallery, and Kaida Contemporary, to newer emerging galleries like Arcadia Art Gallery. 

The festival also continues its practice of providing space for “ younger galleries, rising artists, and alternative artworks” with MoCAF XTN. This space, adjacent to the main ballroom of Marquis Events Space, includes organizations like Rouge Gallery, Space Encounters Gallery, the Cebu-based Qube Gallery, and the artist platform Art House. 

The latter will be showing art from diaspora Filipino artists who also participated in their recent Nena Saguil tribute exhibit Lakbay last February. “We would like the market of MoCAF and its community to be able to appreciate what these Philippine talents we have all around the world that we’re bringing into the Philippines,” Art House founder Carlo Pineda said. 

Launching the Old and the New

A special tribute exhibition for Juvenal Sansó called “From Canvas to Continuity” will be mounted in the venue. Other special exhibitions will also be set-up around the venue, from artists such as Juanito Torres, Bryan Teves, Dennis Bato and Pinky Ibarra Urmaza, Jaspher Penuliar, SAIS, and Isad Diwa.

Beyond that, MoCAF continues its Discoveries series, where fresh rising artists can have their art shown to the public at large. New artists like Jessa Almirol, AJ Manuel, France Daffon, TAO, and walangmaria will be showcased alongside returning artists like KenTo-san, Omok, Mark Hernandez, and Benedir. 

Carlomar Daoana, the creative head of Arcadia Art Gallery, praised MoCAF for its continued platforming of emerging players in the art world. He believes that venues like this provide a broader audience for different artists across the country. 

“ We’re happy that MoCAF is a platform where new players like us can have a space to produce artists to a bigger audience,” Daoana said. “We admire the centrality of the venue, the expansive profile and program, and of course the sheer excitement and enthusiasm of the audience.”

Discovering New Avenues of Exploration

For this year, MoCAF is also expanding its reach beyond the three-day event with MoCAF XP. Here, the festival arranged different participatory workshops and activities that people can engage in. The activities include an Art Bazaar at the Astbury in Makati, a casting and mold making workshop with Art Caravan, and a fabric accessories and DIY button pin making workshop at the Common Room Manila. 

For the Common Room Manila event, it will be held at the Mess Studio inside the establishment, which was built with an environmental sustainability theme in mind. For example, the fabrics and materials used for the DIY workshop will all be recycled.

“What makes Mess Studio different from other art studios is that it is dedicated to upcycling workshops,” Common Room co-founder Ma. Roma Agsunod said. “So we don’t just use any materials there. We want future creatives and inspiring artists to make more mindfully. So most of the activities there use materials discarded trash used by [and] donated by our shoppers.”

Merchandise and Artistic Aesthetic

MoCAF also debuted new merchandise from DBTK, Bad Student, and LUMI Candles. DBTK crafted a new line of t-shirts for this year’s fair, while Bad Student created a series of riso-printed posters specially designed to fit the festival’s aesthetic. 

LUMI Candles premiered a special edition set of candles that they believe evokes the MoCAF spirit, which includes the fragrances of eucalyptus, grapefruit, cedar wood, bergamo, and myrrh.

“This is actually what we’re bringing into the plate and introducing in MoCAF: a different experience for artgoers, where we incorporate fragrance as part of appreciating art,” Rich Asuncion, the CEO of LUMI Candles, said. “The collaboration that we have now with MoCAF is actually more of customizing the fragrance that will translate the different emotions that you will be experiencing while you are enjoying your stroll through the [festival].”

Avenues for Change

During the three-day event, MoCAF Dialogues will allow event-goers to discuss important topics in contemporary art today. Among the topics being tackled are the ethical uses of AI in art, an in-depth talk on Philippine typography, and workshops on intaglio printing and painting.

And going further in their advocacies for a stronger and more inclusive contemporary Philippine art scene, MoCAF partnered with Mbrace Project and ScholarSIP to help create new initiatives to give support to different members of the local art community. 

A Wider World for Art

ScholarSIP is a pop-up cafe established by Fundacion Sansó to provide scholarship opportunities for emerging artists. “What separates us from other museums is that, aside from running a museum to preserve and promote the legacy of Mr. Sansó, we also take care of his advocacies, namely, giving grants to scholars for the fine arts to curators and artists, historians and art writers,” a representative from the organization said.

Meanwhile, Mbrace Project is an organization that provides art therapy for children with cancer and other chronic illnesses. They will be showcasing an exhibit of these works for MoCAF, according to their representative Martin Sy. 

“One of our projects is our art therapy workshops, which we do in hospitals and in partner galleries and museums like Fundacion Sansó,” they said. “We’re very grateful that we’re given this platform. Now it’s our first opportunity to showcase the works of our patients. We give them art therapy because we provide them a healing space wherein they can express their emotions, their pain. And we want to take art that’s not only beautiful, but also very joyful.”

The 2025 Modern and Contemporary Art Festival will be open to the public from July 11 to July 13 at the Marquis Events Place in BGC. Tickets are available to buy at the official MoCAF website.

Photos by Elle Yap.

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