SAN FRANCISCO – The Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco, in partnership with Filipino American Arts Exposition (FAAE), hosts its first art exhibit in years with the opening of “CalligraFilipino VI: Baybayin Fine Art Exhibition” of Filipino visual artist Taipan Lucero.
Philippine Consul General Neil Ferrer, Mrs. Miriam Ferrer, and FAAE President and San Francisco Entertainment Commissioner Al Perez joined Lucero in a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the month-long CalligraFilipino exhibit on September 16, 2022 at the Consulate’s Kalayaan Hall.
In his remarks during the launch, Consul General Ferrer said that through CalligraFilipino, Lucero’s artistic take on the Philippines’ indigenous writing system, “we are witnessing a modern revival of the baybayin as an art form that is representative of our people’s ancestral culture and heritage.”
“For a time, the lack of interest in the baybayin among Filipinos has caused many to fear that it will soon become an extinct script… Even until recently, the baybayin was incorrectly referred to by many as the alibata, due to an erroneous belief that it originated from the Arabic script,” added Consul General Ferrer.
“We are thankful to scholars in the academic field as well as artists such as [Lucero], for their contributions in bringing about the rebirth of the baybayin as a distinctive cultural symbol that Filipinos the world over can be proud of,” the Philippine Consul General said.
As a token of appreciation to the Consulate for hosting his first solo exhibition outside the Philippines, Lucero presented to Consul General Ferrer a painting featuring a stylized baybayin translation of the five core values of the Department of Foreign Affairs: patriotism, integrity, professionalism, excellence, and service.
According to Consul General Ferrer, the said painting will be displayed in the Consulate’s soon-to-be-relaunched Sentro Rizal San Francisco, the Bay Area’s hub for Philippine history, culture and the arts.
Lucero’s CalligraFilipino exhibit follows his successful stint at the 2022 Pistahan Parade and Festival in San Francisco last August, and his series of talks and demonstrations on baybayin art at the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C. and the Philippine Consulate General in New York. The exhibition coincides with the celebration of Museum and Galleries Month in the Philippines, and Filipino American History Month in the U.S.
Apart from the CalligraFilipino exhibit, which will run through October 14, 2022, Lucero will headline a talk and demo at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco on October 2, 2022. He will also be featured during the Filipino American History Month celebration at the San Francisco City Hall on October 5, 2022, and during the 6th Filipino American International Book Festival at the San Francisco Public Library on October 15, 2022.
Lucero, a fine arts graduate of the University of the Philippines Diliman, is a recipient of the 2022 Competitive Grants Program of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, the Philippine government’s main cultural agency.
(PCGSF Release)
