GREEN PAPAYA
ART PROJECTS inaugurates its alternative space with THE UMBRELLA COUNTRY, a veritable portfolio of Philippine contemporary history by five Filipino artists who have made their mark in Asia-Pacific.

Borrowed from Bino A. Realuyo's acclaimed novel of the same title, this exhibit is a retelling of Philippine and Asian social realities. Noted for their diverse yet acrimonious and edgy observations and comments about our society, Alvarado, Bose, Cajipe-Endaya, Co and Fajardo continue to tread into a country persistently haunted by ghosts of past colonial masters and despot of a recent martial law regime.

As in Realuyo's "tumultuous streets of Manila, where the earth is as brown as tamarind and the pungent smells of vinegar and mashed peppers kill the air, where seasons shift between scorching sun and torrential rain," this exhibit offers but another way of looking at society and "strives to make sense of a world that is growing increasingly harsher before [our] eyes."

Exhibit runs until June 2, 2000