The bigger picture: MoCAF 2025 sees artists of all kinds share same space

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MANILA, Philippines – A reflection of the country’s shifting artistic terrain, the 2025 Modern and Contemporary Art Festival (MoCAF) mounted its fourth iteration as its largest to date.

Hosted at the Marquis Events Place in Taguig City from July 11 to 13, the three-day, multi-story exhibition brought together a broad mix of emerging artists, mid-career practitioners, and established names, with works spanning painting, digital art, mixed media, sculpture, and design.

As the festival opened, MoCAF 2025 immediately unfolded its breadth, with artists themselves present to speak about their work, processes, and the shifting spaces they now occupy in the contemporary art scene.

A three-storey rabbit hole

MoCAF 2025 transformed the Marquis Events Place into a labyrinth of arts and creativity. Stepping inside the venue, you are greeted with two sculptures, a preview of what is to come.

As part of MoCAF’s expansion, the second floor is dedicated to “MoCAF Gives Back” with advocacy partners Fundacion Sanso’s Scholarsip Cafe and Mbrace Project. Both groups illustrate an infusion of art and advocacy.

Goodies, refreshment and food bought at Scholarsip will be for the benefit of scholarships, cultural programs, and sustainable practices. Mbrace Project showcased the art made by children with chronic illness and cancer during art therapy sessions.

Venturing further into the third floor, you are greeted with a buzz of excitement as different artworks are plastered at almost every corner. The main ballroom housed the MoCAF Main Exhibition, which featured 34 local and international galleries that carried the distinct works of various artists specializing in different mediums.

The main exhibition brought together both emerging and established artists, offering a compelling contrast in how identity is explored, even within the same medium.

In sculpture alone, the range was striking: from Toym Imao’s complex, figure-laden spiral staircase in “Debugging,” to Jesse Camacho’s emotive, pop-inflected character in “Bloo.”

As the crowd wound its way through the festival’s many galleries, certain works invited them to pause; whether for their scale, material play, or subject matter. Among these, the Orlina family’s glass sculptures drew a rare kind of consensus among festival-goers for its show of expertise.

Nature’s Abundance, as the special exhibit was titled, was a highlight of the fair as the delicate curves and colors of each work felt ethereal when observing them up close.

In the far corner of the room, Japanese artist Rina Yokouchi plastered her works of adorable cats. The square mixed media painting on canvas used a mix of pastel and bright colors to depict the feline creature in action.

The third floor is also where Lumi Candles and MoCAF’s collaboration is most prominent. Their collaborative scent has made the experience all the more special as it delves deeper into the concept of experiencing art through the different senses.

While the musky scent was strong enough to take over most of the third floor, it was not too overpowering. Lumi Candle’s scent perfectly complimented the art festival experience.

Outside the main ballroom, MoCAF XTN Galleries, the festival’s platform for spotlighting young, independent galleries and artist-run spaces, also showcased their works.

The tight hallways were dosed with technicolor as the participating galleries, such as Space Encounters Gallery and 22nd and 5th Gallery, also showcased their featured artist’s fun and eye-catching creations.

However, the festival was not limited to galleries alone. The big courtyard had participating MoCAFXTN Artisans and MoCAFXTN Bites. As all participants were under one big tent, it did feel as if we were going through a flea market filled with artistic treasures.

Even whilst tucked away from the frenzy of the main exhibit, guests are still treated to sights as artisans sold all kinds of goodies, from ceramic cups to playing cards, handmade rugs, and artistic prints.

Meanwhile, MoCAFXTN Bites, featuring concessionaires such as The Matcha Tokyo, also had tables and couches available for those who wanted to take a mini break to enjoy a filling reprieve before diving into the visual spectacles once more.

Entering MoCAF 2025 felt like going through a wormhole of art and whimsy, entering a new world filled with the brightest of colors and a myriad of shapes — a complete 180 from the streets and gray buildings you would see before arriving at the events place.

Portrait of the artist

Beyond the immersive installations and branded collaborations, MoCAF 2025 finds its heart and soul in quieter corners of the busy Marquis floors — in booths where artists, all of varying years in the industry and approaches to their craft, told stories of responsibility, nostalgia, and personal transformation.

Now in its fourth year, MoCAF has expanded its reach while maintaining a commitment to artists working across styles, materials, and categories often excluded from the traditional gallery circuit. The vernissage offered a glimpse into today’s galleries and their evolving ethos, where fine art can sit alongside digital prints, hand-drawn compositions, and even towering mecha homages.

At Art Lounge Manila’s booth, veteran painter Roel Obemio showcased three new works unified by the theme of dreamscapes, delicate scenes of relaxing figures rendered in his signature Boterismo style. Known for rotund forms, subtle colors, and gently surreal compositions, Obemio’s canvases exude a finished, whimsical quality that continues to evolve with time.

Now decades into his practice, Obemio reflected on how his command of color has matured. “Papunta na siya sa pinakagusto ko (It’s getting closer to what I want),” he told Rappler, describing a tonal sensibility that has finally begun to align with his inner vision.

The process, he noted, is ongoing. “I do believe na ang art, hanggang sa katapusan ang pag-eevolve niya. Hangga’t kung kailan ka matapos sa mundo, tuloy-tuloy ang pag-evolve niya (I do believe that art is something that continues to evolve until the very end. Until you’re not yet finished in this world, your art will continue to evolve).”

Obemio also pointed to MoCAF’s growing role in cultivating artistic awareness, especially among younger artists and audiences. “Nagbigay ang MoCAF ng awareness sa mga bagong sibol ng kabataan na pumasok sa art ngayon (MoCAF provides an awareness for all the new things brought by young people who are entering the field of art),” he said.

As a self-taught artist hailing from Batangas City, Qwark’s new body of work at Village Art Gallery marked a distinct departure from his earlier, detail-heavy “doodler” style. The shift in visual language — now “more muted and more restrained,” he tells Rappler — paralleled a shift in his personal life.

“It’s about stepping up to a responsibility,” Qwark says of his exhibit, To Carry a Crown, which offers visual meditations on the changes brought by becoming a breadwinner. His paintings distill personal developments from the last year into a medieval analogy, portraying scenes from palatial duties to village excursions.

“For me, it meant the responsibilities that I got from stepping up. It felt like responsibilidad siya ng hari (a responsibility fit for a king).”

His pieces trace that challenging transition of familial responsibility, especially when one the tasked breadwinner an artist, with a visual quietude and vaguely cartoon-esque characters that belie their emotional weight.

While the formal palette may have softened, the intent behind each composition has deepened. Qwark described the work as a return to personal truth that is no longer focused on impressing with technique, but grounded in delivering a poetics of his lived experience.

He welcomed MoCAF’s openness to such shifts in sensibility. “Naglabasan ang mga ‘low-brow,’ ang mga pop surrealism (Out came the low-brow and pop surrealism),” he remarks on the specialties and styles of the festival’s artists. “Which tells me the market’s changing. We’re getting a bigger slice of the pie. […] It’s good. It’s a fresh take on the scene.”

At Rojo Galerie’s space, Megs Empinado’s figures stood at the intersection of memory and technology. Drawing from the visual language of 1980s and ’90s toy prototypes, Empinado, a licensed figure maker prior to becoming an artist, reimagined icons like Voltron and Gundam through contemporary digital processes like 3D printing.

“Ang booth namin ay ang mga super robots. Sila ‘yung mga kinagiliwan ng mga uncle at tsaka tito ko, tatay namin noong ‘70s, tsaka ‘80s at ‘90s (Our booth displays these super robots. They are what my uncles and father were enamored with throughout the ‘70s, alongside the ‘80s and ‘90s),” Empinado told Rappler.

His work fuses nostalgia with craftsmanship, blurring the lines between cultural artifacts and collectible children’s toys. The result is both referential and forward-looking, a translation of childhood imagery into a format suited for today’s digital-native collectors made possible by his work and experiences beyond a traditional artist’s studio.

He also exhibited original pieces of his own making, proudly displaying the prototype of his Haribon: a mech with motifs nodding to the Philippine Eagle. For Empinado, who used to create cyberpunk renditions of Philippine heroes like Andres Bonifacio, this piece blends his early themes with his now-signature subject matter.

Empinado described the festival as true to its name, wherein emerging artists working in hybrid or unconventional formats can be platformed. “Dito makikita mo na dynamic ang pagkakahalo ng mga artists at artworks (Here, you can see that the mix of artists and artworks is very dynamic),” he said.

For MoCAF 2025, Ilocos Sur–based artist Bryan Teves was featured in a special solo exhibition titled The Beauty of Becoming.

The show brought together a series of paintings that center women set against expansive natural landscapes — fields of wildflowers, soft foliage, and skies in slow motion. The exhibition space echoed this vision, with mossy greens underfoot, scattered mirrors, and clusters of mushrooms nestled in grass, creating a physical extension of the worlds inside his canvases.

The paintings are evocative of Teves’ skill as an artist, but he shared that their evolution has been anything but premeditated.

“Hindi ko rin kasi inaasahan na ganito ang magiging outcome, ’yung dati sa ngayon (I never imagined that the outcome would end up like this, from the past to present ),” he told Rappler. “Parang ang ginagawa ko lang ay mas ginagalingan ko habang tumatagal. Para mas maging pulido (All I seem to do is just work harder as times pass. To become more polished).”

Art festivals, for Teves, helps facilitate people’s exposure to up-and-coming creatives — something that was unfeasible in the yesteryears when only national artists were able to etch themselves into public memory.

To young artists facing uncertainty, Teves offered a direct encouragement: “Kung mahirap man ang benta, ipagpatuloy mo lang. Hanggang sa maabot ang pangarap (If it’s difficult to find sales, just keep going. Until you reach your dreams).”

This year’s edition of MoCAF didn’t propose a singular direction for contemporary Filipino art, but instead foregrounded multiplicity and diversity in medium, message, and background.

By bringing together artists at different stages in their careers, the fair departs from making curatorial statements, and instead functions to show cross-sections of what’s currently being made, shared, and reimagined.

Whether through introspective paintings, pop-influenced prints, or craft-based installations, the works on view traced individual artistic journeys rather than a unified aesthetic. It’s in this mix that MoCAF finds its footing: as a space where art is found by truly modern and contemporary artists, and those artists are given room to unfold on their own terms. By bringing together artists at different stages in their careers, the fair departs from making curatorial statements, and instead functions to show cross-sections of what’s currently being made, shared, and reimagined.

Mikay Tormon is a Rappler intern studying Bachelor of Arts in Communication with a Minor in Sociology at the Ateneo de Manila University, while Angela Divina is a Rappler intern studying Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the Ateneo de Manila University.

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