Portfolio

Selected works from different exhibitions, performances, and community art projects.

[Performance Art]

Ikarus: Son of the Sun (2008-2020)

Ikarus ikarus ikarus

[Art Exhibition]

Midnight Talkers + Internal Monologues (2019)

New series of works by Ra’z Salvarita. “Midnight Talkers + Internal Monologues” (2019) are encapsulated in the nights of solitary musings and wee hour brain-chats.

Midnight Talkers + Internal Monologues invites us to consider the playful and the playfully snide, its title immediately reminiscent of nocturnal talks with good friends which eventually embrace a healthy dose of the id expressing itself, knowing full well it is in good and forgiving company; or introspective musings done alone when the clock strikes the witching hour and we become proverbial “cats” inert in repose but always alert the subtle earthquakes of our ponderings and reveries.
“Midnight Animals in Somnambulist Ennui” by Ian Rosales Casocot

[REVIEW] Midnight Animals in Somnambulist Ennui by Ian Rosales Casocot

If there is a local visual artist that deserves fuller and more widespread recognition for the consistency he has exhibited in the name of the imaginative in the past decade, it should be Raz Salvarita — although sometimes it can be hard to pin down the singular artist, simply because he has done so much. He deserves bigger acclaim.

The Dumaguete-based painter who has familial roots in Bacolod has continued to beguile us with an assortment of passions, never an art dabbler, always laser-like in the reasons for his current pursuits — but Raz is all pluralities. He does experimental filmmaking, and has in fact been nominated for an Urian for his short film Patience, which infamously “chronicled” the languorous journey of a snail through a patch in a garden. [Recently, he is obsessed with the idea of filming Dumaguete geriatrics as they offer their memories of their youth.] He has done performance art, and in fact helped paved the way for the preservation of the forests around Lake Balinsasayao from possible encroachments by an energy company, by going around Dumaguete semi-naked, painted white from head to toe, bearing a sign that called dire attention to the environmental issue. Or photography, where he has always captured an uncanny but intimate feel of the environment — always being the gimlet-eyed naturalist. Or paintings, where his abstractions sometimes are a paean to his upcycling tendencies, but are often studies of the psyche in domestic mode, his paintings a portal to fantasies and nightmares. Click to continue reading

[Short Film]

I Am Patience (2012)

A soulful encounter between a small creature, a snail called ‘Patience’ moving about a banana leaf, and the filmmaker who captures the serenity of it all.

Simply and fondly described as the “longest short film”, viewers are left in the midst of the silent and slowness reality of the life of a snail – called ‘patience’. Filmed in Ubud, Bali, the artist-filmmaker Ra’z Salvarita was mesmerized and entranced with the gracefulness of the tiny creature while unintentionally enclosed in the mindfulness practice of slow living.

I Am Patience (2012) was shown during the 61 Short Film Festival at Silliman University; and then it was chosen to represent Dumaguete City for the 5th Cinema Rehiyon (2013) – the annual festival for regional films. ‘Patience’, on snail-pace, kept on treading and was shown during the 4th Binisaya Film Festival in Cebu. And finally, it was nominated for Best Short Film during the 36th Gawad Urian Awards (one of the most prestigious Philippine film award-giving bodies) which honored the best of Filipino films in the year 2012.

[Public Art Installation]

Damgo Artboxes (2010)

For the celebration of National Arts Month in 2010, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts of the Philippines have granted the public installation art project of artist Ra’z Salvarita – “Damgo Quatros Kantos” (Dream in Four Corners) Artboxes as part of the Philippine International Arts Festival. The artboxes were installed in two capital cities on the island province of Negros – in Dumaguete City and Bacolod City, respectively.

These artboxes invite curious “seers” where they peep through the punched holes in all of the sidewalls of the box. The artist installed objects inside the boxes that connects to socially-relevant themes that spark dialogues and reflections among viewers. They were installed in strategic public spaces – in a mall (Robinsons Place Dumaguete), public plaza (Quezon Park, Dumaguete), musem (The Negros Museum, Bacolod), and public park (The Capitol Lagoon, Bacolod).

Check the gallery here Enter the Artbox