Maria Consuelo Cabrera
Maria Consuelo Cabrera (b. 1981) is currently finishing her graduate studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman at the Department of Art Studies under the Curatorial Studies track. In 2002, she obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts major in Advertising Arts at the University of Santo Tomas and afterwards she spent a decade working in design and publication companies as an art director before she pivoted to full-time art practice. As a visual artist, she has been actively involved in exhibitions since 2006, while her independent curatorial practice officially started through an all-women exhibition Curved House in 2012 and was succeeded by several participation in curatorial workshops that mostly gathered practitioners in Asia.
Cabrera has organized micro-discussions on artistic and curatorial anxieties and was part of the committee for the UPD Department of Art Studies MA curriculum review committee under the curatorial cluster wherein she co-authored a new course to be offered that focuses on art practices that engages the archive. She recently bookmarked a project from her post as guest curator for the Cultural Center of the Philippines Visual Arts and Museum Division titled Upskilling on Performance and Visual Arts Curation. Her curatorial role involved designing of the intensive workshop, co-managing a committee of mentors and workshop facilitators, execution of various phases that included various modules on curatorship, cultural work, and community organizing, and as editor of the publication Upskilling Handbook: Workshop Proceedings and Guide to Developing Modes of Care in Curatorship. She is also the curatorial consultant for the Landscape Project by Buen Calubayan, which has research, exhibition, and publication components to present his long-term exploration on landscapes and diagrams. Maria Consuelo is also preoccupied with ideating systems of and producing scholarship on art archives for the early digital materials by the grassroot media collective Southern Tagalog Exposure and Imelda Cajipe Endaya’s monograph development.
Maria Consuelo Cabrera, Instructor and Independent Curator, Department of Art Studies, University of the Philippines - Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines, has been awarded by Fernando Zobel de Ayala, Manila, the Philippines.