Maria Consuelo Cabrera
Conference Report. December 2024
Locating In(ter)dependent Practice within the CIMAM Community
When I applied for the CIMAM’s travel grant, I had a multi-pronged motivation as a hybrid practitioner. In our context in the Philippines, it is very common for artists like me to eventually take on curatorial roles and develop our practices as artist-curators. Having this background allows me to understand the ebb and flow of art-making and the curatorial within the intricate balance, questioning, and challenging of the interdependency in theory and practice. I am also an independent curator. My experience in museum work is rooted in working in collections management, exhibitions, public programs, and projects presented in museums. These experiences equipped me with an understanding of the administrative, philosophical, social and political roles necessary within and outside museum environments. On top of this hybrid praxis, I am also an educator in a state university wherein all my extension creative work is transformed into pedagogical devices and made legible through teaching and academic writing. The CIMAM theme that centers on sustainability as an integrated and holistic approach in museology while foregrounding artistic endeavors calcifies most of my major concerns in navigating the place of contemporary art, not only in cultural work, but most importantly in the continued shaping of Philippine art that is sensitive to global-local discourses wherein the museum is a significant platform.
Individual and Collective Agencies
What set the tone of the conference for me was Mark Bradford’s keynote presentation when he narrated his failures and successes in working with institutions and communities. It situated the gathering of museum workers as a learning opportunity wherein artists courageously and productively confront traditional hierarchies that are present to make art production possible. Bradford emphasizes that the hyperlocality of his process can bring about sincere and grounded collaborations built upon empathy and making space for others. The succeeding discussions on institutional efforts in addressing sustainability in the context of environmental and ecological crisis illustrated the kind of efforts museums can do, given proper and adequate resources and motivation. It was interesting to know about what well thought out responses to the call for carbon neutrality in museum operations can look like. They were attempts to set the so-called best practices in the field. The afternoon session centered on architecture and placemaking that shapes museum publics and engagement. The presentations also illustrated possibilities of visionary thinking in terms of spatial relationships that boosts and literally and metaphorically scaffolds the curatorial in its exhibition-making strategies. This is an important discussion for curators especially in the digital age wherein physical space can become a secondary option for aesthetic experiences. The first day, for me, demonstrated the importance of conscious utilization of individual and collective agencies to propel organizations and efforts to first, locate themselves in the broad alliance for environmentally ethical practices; second, to gear towards working on mindful operations to execute and uphold this kind of ethical practice; and third, to extend help to fellows in the field who are having difficulties and limitations for various internal and external reasons.
Biography
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.