THESE ACTS 'MAKES ART PRESENT

Explaining her curatorial process for the MO_Space exhibition "These Acts," Eya Beldia cites the writer and researcher Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez: "Curation is about making art present."

- SEAN CARBALLO

The particular syntax of that statement offers a crucial framing to curation, how we can view curation as a method of production that platforms, elucidates, and interrogates artistic practice. For Legaspi-Ramirez, the critical task of curation must carefully look at an art object "in all its necessary problematics." She asks in turn: "How might we take that challenge and look at the work of curation as not some merely ministerial window-dressing of sensual desire?" What Beldia does through "These Acts" is explore the myriad ways curation can envision the ways art can look beyond and within the self; can move from an idea to an object and back to an idea. Grappling with diverse media such as steel works, sound, clay and printmaking, Beldia ultimately sees curation as a way to "hold conversations through our actions." The exhibition is split into two acts, which Beldia envisions to be a complementary exchange between the inner and outer worlds of the artists. The first act assembles Micaela Benedicto's geometric patterned steel mirrors, Gerecho Iniel Cruz's circuitry of magnetic wires, Rhaz Oriente's LED clo