In partnership with the Sulu State College, Tausug Visual Artists Now is an exposition by six emerging visual artists from the provincial capital of Sulu. Conceived by visual artist and art educator Juliusking Vivas for the NCCA Gallery, the Tausug Visual Artists Now project explores to recalibrate descriptions about contemporaneity in arts and culture in the archipelago southwest of the country that shares a treasury of histories, heritage, and development with other neighboring islands such as the multi-state and also ever-diverse Borneo. 

The mostly figurative paintings, artists’ reflections, and supporting photos and texts presented at the larger space of the NCCA Gallery are a motion to discuss the dilations, delays, and purported dispossessions in art practice and education seen and lived in the schisms of centre-periphery of cultures. As artists of today, the collaborators for the Tausug Visual Artists Now offer visual outputs and outcomes through these following influences: popular culture as migrated into the vicinity; institutional prescriptions (such as from national awards or grants, or guidances from cultural, academic, or governmental agents); and the precarity of the artists’ daily labors as they continue to balance domestic and collared responsibilities with their unfettered desire to experience and shape their lives through fracturing art as they know it. 

Through the survey of works and sentiments assembled by Vivas for Tausug Visual Artists Now, the audience on-site, online, and through print are invited to engage on this proposition: The scions of ‘the people of the currents of the sea’—the Tausug—are still ever buoyant, adaptive, and introspectively creative. Despite present stereotypes and pressures to conform, the waves of art practice and thought thrive in Sulu as they tessellate possible futures, while keeping the same rigor and depth that the Tausug have maintained for centuries. 

Tausug Visual Artists Now is open for viewing at the NCCA Gallery at 633 General Luna St, Intramuros, Manila, 1002 Metro Manila on 06 – 30 April 2022. Under Alert Level 1, the NCCA Gallery is open for walk-in, fully-vaccinated visitors. Vaccination cards shall be checked. Unvaccinated minors will be allowed to enter but must be accompanied by a fully vaccinated individual. Check the NCCA official Facebook page for any changes in Alert Level restrictions. Call 8257 2205 or email gallery@ncca.gov.ph for more details.