PROJECTIONS, a richly diverse dip into the field of cartography and geography asks many questions and displays contrasting answers. The precision assumed by maps are highlighted, but in the same breath displays the great imprecision and subjectivity with which maps have been created. Used to give directions and to work as guides, maps create fragmented thoroughfares from one point to another. Written accounts in old books vie for space in our imaginations, while landscapes procure to lodge itself as a general idea for place. As depictions of place—maps, landscapes, accounts—translates our experience of the world, unveiling our notions, our understanding and our perceptions of the world we continue to traverse.

Using the vast map collection of the Lopez library as inspiration, the exhibition explores the possibilities of geography using a variety of expressions and interests that intersect on its surface.

Such documents are provided resonance by artists whose works are also found within the collection:

Juan Arellano, Fernando Amorsolo, Macario Vitalis, Juan Luna, FR Hidalgo, Roberto Chabet, Alfonso Ossorio, Ray Albano, Onib Olmedo. Works by Lordy Rodriguez, Erwin Leaņo, Mafe Baluyos, and Elena Cobangbang, younger artists whose practice makes reference to cartography and geography will also be included in the exhibition.

BayanMap, a group who pursues the mapping of the Philippines will also take part in PROJECTIONS.

From antique charts made by Alejandro Malaspina, Jean-Francois La Perouse and the renown Jesuit Pedro de Murillo Velarde, navigational maps crossing from California to the Philippines, military maps of 1944, maps of Manila and guides made exclusively for long road trips across the islands to antique charts found in books, as well as travelogues detailing the voyages of Spanish, French and Dutch travelers and explorers- the collection provides substantial material for reviewing the past vis-ā-vis the present.

PROJECTIONS is a journey through distortions, and belief in precision, shrinkages and vastness, history and art, science and emotion, static views and moving images, one that shifts across disciplines to create connections arbitrarily like the latitudes and longitudes found on a map.

Projections: maps, directions and sites, distortions, charts, detours,
rumblings and ramblings
March 26 to July 12, 2003