To find or to discover lies at the heart of Eskinita Art Farm’s Tuklas program. Yet more than  identifying a new generation of artists devoted to their own growth and freedom, what  Tuklas has achieved in its current batch is the encounter of artists committed to the social  and personal transformations that make such growth and freedom possible. Reborn from  the traces of the past, new blood now courses through history’s veins, carrying forward the  yearning of another generation to seek the self and to forge an art practice that serves not  only itself, but also the communities from which its symbols and images are drawn and  through which they find meaning. 

In this year’s exhibition, breakthroughs unfold not as a singular act but as a double  movement – an excavation of both the world and the self. The artists gathered here inhabit  that porous space between the personal and the political where expression is not only a  declaration of identity but also a negotiation with the conditions that shape it. Their works  arise from lived terrains of labor, class, gender, memory, and the everyday, while also  descending into the intimate interiors of being and becoming. 

To look outward is to recognize the forces that define our collective existence; to look inward  is to confront the many selves that flicker beneath the surface. These artists do both. Four  articulate the socio-political and economic realities that ground their art in the present  moment, translating structures into symbols and critique into form. The other four turn  toward the interior, undressing the self with both vulnerability and courage as they navigate  the dense forest of identities that reveal what it means to be human today. 

-Janine Dimaranan