INAUGURAL ART PHAIR SHOWCASING FILIPINO-AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS DEBUTS AT 30TH ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF PHILIPPINE ART AND CULTURE

Venue: Festival of Philippine Art and Culture (FPAC)
Location: Point Fermin Park, San Pedro, 807 Paseo Del Mar in San Pedro, CA 90731 

Date: Saturday, September 14, 2024
Festival Hours: Noon to 9pm
Art Phair Hours: Noon to 6pm
Artist Talk & Walk-through: 2:30-3:30pm
Admission is Free 

San Pedro, CA - FilAm Arts’ 30th Annual Festival of Philippine Art and Culture (FPAC) presents its inaugural Art Phair, an alternative art fair designed to provide communities with an opportunity to view and collect artwork by Contemporary Filipino-American visual artists. 

Filipino and Filipino-American artists have long been underrepresented in museums and galleries, remaining largely unknown to the FilAm community and the public at large. The mission of the Art Phair is to foster new fans and patrons of Filipino-American visual art. 

The eight artists in the Art Phair comprise a diverse group from Northern and Southern California, with influences stemming from their backgrounds as Filipino Americans, but who do not create solely from this space.

Nica Aquino is a Los Angeles-based visual artist, curator, & cultural producer. She primarily experiments with 35mm analog photography, documenting life as she sees it using an everyday point-and-shoot camera. 

 Edmund Arevalo is a first-generation Filipino-American painter and sculptor who lives and works in Los Angeles. His work tells the stories of colonial histories, familial narratives, and the Filipino diaspora. 

 Nicanor Evangelista, Jr. practices Batok and Kali to honor his ancestors and express his animistic approach to life. He creates sacred geometric mandalas that are embedded with animistic Filipino culture. 

 John Yoyogi Fortes is a Sacramento-based painter whose work explores physical and psychological landscapes of self, culture, and identity through a bicultural lens. His paintings depict an obscure world of artistic styles, dark humor, and wordplay. 

 Carol Anne McChrystal is a visual artist based in Los Angeles whose material-driven works take the form of the traditional plaited mats of her two island homelands, Ireland and the Philippines. 

 Elyse Pignolet is an American of Filipino heritage living and working in Los Angeles. Elyse works primarily in ceramics and her work is inspired by and deals with themes such as the dialectic between feminism and misogyny, inequality, and cultural stereotypes. 

 Based in San Francisco, Carlo Ricafort’s paintings pepper western-style Expressionism with notions of primitivism, giving license to aesthetic naiveté and serving as self-conscious takes on what might be thought of as “modern primitivism.” 

 Rodolfo Samonte is a distinguished Filipino artist known for his mastery of reductive and minimalistic art forms. With a rich academic background in Fine Arts and printmaking, Samonte’s works have garnered recognition and accolades locally and internationally. 

 Art Phair programming will include an Artist Talk beginning at the Discovery Stage and followed by an artist-led walk-through, a “sala space” (sala means “living room” in Tagalog) featuring a Banig-influenced installation, and short video segments about established Contemporary FilAm Artists such as Pacita Abad, Santiago Bose, Paul Pfeiffer, Stephanie Syjuco, and Carlos Villa, among others. FilAm Arts welcomes you to the first Art Phair at the Festival of Philippine Art and Culture and looks forward to continuing this event in the future. 

About FILAMARTS: 

FILAMARTS is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the understanding of the arts and culture of Filipino Americans. With a commitment to preserving tradition and fostering innovation, FilAm Arts creates platforms for artists and audiences to connect, collaborate, and celebrate the diverse expressions of Filipino heritage. 

 About Point Fermin Park: 

Point Fermin Park is located at 807 Paseo Del Mar in San Pedro, CA 90731. The park consists of 37 landscaped acres of tree-shaded lawns, sheltered pergolas, colorful gardens and a promenade along the edge of the palisade. The vantage point atop the rugged bluffs affords a breathtaking view of the coast toward Santa Catalina Island. 

 Follow @filamartsla on Instagram and Facebook for the latest updates. Official Hashtag #FPAC2024 

 For more information about FPAC and FilAm Arts, visit: http://filamarts.org & http://filamarts-fpac.org