James Luigi Tana

Tana, James Luigi
James Luigi Tana, Independent Contemporary Art Curator, Manila, Philippines.

Conference Report. December 2024

This year’s three-day long CiMAM Annual Conference in Los Angeles had been a productive exchange of insights and informed opinions about sustainability. It became apparent that institutions of different scale and nature have their own approach to sustainability when it comes to institutional operations, may it be through conservation, acquisition, or both. Convened during PST Art in Los Angeles, the thematics around sustainability seemed to be a deliberate and perhaps a strong positioning to understand contexts (instead of seeking concrete solutions) in the merging of art and science.

From the onset of the conference, Chus Martinez raises her doubts pertaining to sustainability, whether its practical application operates as a methodology or a philosophy. I personally feel like the conference allowed us to gather and share our concerns, conditions and state of being, not necessarily to seek answers from one another, but to take pause and listen earnestly– the first important step– and to eventually ask more questions. How flexible is the structure of our museums? What are the tangibles and intangibles that we are attempting to conserve? How do we withstand crises in solidarity with the rest of the world?

Cecilia Winter proposes to shift our attitude from anticipating loss of value in art to value creation when it comes to our collective decision-making. Museums, as per Kelsey Shell, are spaces of time and reflection. However, in an era of global crises, it has been an endless race against time. It makes me wonder how our individual and more so our collective efforts could potentially take us ahead of the curve as we all grapple with our own perceived notions of permanence and the temporary in developing a more sustainable art ecosystem. Time, an inextricable element, then becomes central to the development of sustainable models.

Having heard from colleagues and leaders of major institutions and community-led art spaces, there’s this realization that there are gaps, big ones, in the infrastructures and structural framework of our museums that need to be bridged and addressed. I would like to view these gaps as interstices– as spaces for negotiation and as common grounds for interconnectedness among us. As Candice Hopkins noted in her speech, the state of not being a museum relies on “how we can host rather than how we can accumulate.” In essence, there’s sustainability in sharing truth and transferring knowledge. There’s sustainability when even the best approaches and practices are put into question and challenged. I would like to believe that the CiMAM conference has served its purpose: to create a valuable moment for expression of truths and for production of knowledge that further inspire action in sustainability; all of these are possible through one’s openness.


Biography

James Luigi Tana (b. 1990) is an independent curator, writer, and a cultural worker from the Philippines.

In 2023, he curated keeping / sending (2023) at MONO8 Gallery. Together with Museum Director and Curator Joselina Cruz, he co-curated Adaptation: A Reconnected Earth at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila for its 2023 inaugural and post-pandemic exhibit.

He curated works of the grantees for the 2024 Benilde Open. He served as a scout expert for Han Nefkens Foundations’ Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2022, and LOOP Barcelona Video Art Production Grant 2022. He served as the project manager for Blaffer Art Museum's Liberties Were Taken by Filipino artist Cian Dayrit (2024).

He served as a member of the curatorial team at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) Manila for Tropical Climate Forensics (2022), do it (Manila) (2021), Watch and Chill (2021), MCAD Commons: Artist’s Film International: Care (2021), Haegue Yang: The Cone of Concern (2020), and Construction of Truths (2019).

He participated as a researcher-curator in co.iki’s remote residency program Memory and Memoricide of the Land: Reimagining Alternative Model of Museum in 2021. He served as curator for the Manila iteration of Korea Research Fellow: 10x10.

Tana is a contributing writer for the Thirteen Artists Awards book project. He wrote commissioned articles for Asia-Europe Foundation (2020–2021). He contributed to InTheMuseum, a newsletter sponsored by the Centre of Doctoral Studies at King’s College London “which explores engaging with art and museum in a pandemic.” He won the Ateneo Art Gallery-Kalaw Ledesma Foundation Inc. Essay Writing Prize for the non-student category (2020).

He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Santo Tomas and is currently finishing his master’s degree in art studies-curatorial studies at the University of the Philippines.

James Luigi Tana, Independent Contemporary Art Curator, Manila, Philippines, has been awarded by Fernando Zobel de Ayala, Manila, the Philippines.