Child World Grotto

Ernest Concepcion (b. 1977, Manila) is a Filipino painter based in Quezon City whose work merges classical landscape motifs with contemporary caricature to examine warfare, conflict, and the lingering residue of postwar 20th‐century existence. This investigation began with The Line Wars (2002), a series of drawings in which cartoon-like battles unfold across densely packed compositions—chairs collide, pasta sinks into rice quicksand, and surreal armies clash.
Concepcion expanded these concerns into large-scale installations and paintings, notably at Kentler International Drawing Space, New York, in 2008, and in a subsequent series of enamel-on-steel explosion paintings where color became the physical substance of horizon and conflict. Over time, his practice shifted away from overt caricature toward epic, destabilized landscapes.
He spent many years in Brooklyn, New York, participating in residencies including the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Workspace Program, Bronx Museum Artist-In-The-Marketplace (AIM) Program, Artists Alliance Inc., Lower East Side Printshop, the LMCC Swing Space Program at Governors Island, an exchange residency in Beijing and NECTAR in Spain. A graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, he works across painting, sculpture, and installation.
Concepcion received the CCP’s 13 Artists Award (2015) and held his first solo museum exhibition at the U.P. Vargas Museum in 2014. He currently lives and works between Manila and Brooklyn and teaches at the U.P. College of Fine Arts.

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Ana Verayo is a multimedia artist based in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines who completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts Major in Visual Communication at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. She works predominantly with industrial paint and utilizes a printmaking process that explores paradoxical non patterns in natural and artificial landscapes. She uses shifts in moments and time to create intention in her abstract expression. She is featured by the European Space Agency, BluPrint Magazine and Asian Development Bank among other publications. She recently completed an artist residency in Catalonia, Spain.

Better to reign in desolation than serve in heaven, where the circulation of faux options appears: acceptance, safety, insurance, the promise of belonging. Is that heaven?

What is heaven in the face of freedom?

From the bounds of hell to the gates of paradise, our stubborn desire for autonomy transcends— The artist’s struggle for personal liberation is worthwhile, running against the turning of the world where war is livestreamed, and empathy is incinerated; Violent earnestness and authenticity could be the key to salvation.