COSMIC CONCERNS: NENA SAGUIL & FADJAR SIDIK

Cebu City, Philippines - June 25, 2024 - Art Agenda and Lumena Auctions are pleased to jointly present the exhibition, Cosmic Concerns: Nena Saguil & Fadjar Sidik which runs at Lumena Auction’s brand-new gallery at Mahogany Place, Cebu from 28 June to 12 July. The exhibition features two of Southeast Asia’s leading 20th-century painters who each made significant contributions to abstract art in the region. Cosmic Concerns is a landmark occasion in many ways: it is the first time both Saguil and Sidik’s works are juxtaposed in one exhibition and the first time both artists’ works are shown in Cebu.

Nena Saguil and Fadjar Sidik’s artworks to be featured in Cosmic Concerns

Left: Nena Saguil, Untitled, 1974, image courtesy of Art Agenda and Lumena Auctions

Right: Fadjar Sidik, Dinamika Keruangan II, 1971, image courtesy of Art Agenda and Lumena Auctions

At the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale presently taking place, both Nena Saguil and Fadjar Sidik are represented by a work each on loan from the Philippine and Indonesian national collections respectively. They are the only two 20th-century artists from Southeast Asia amongst 37 others featured in the abstraction section of the Biennale’s main exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere.

Nena Saguil and Fadjar Sidik’s artworks featured at the 60th edition of Venice Biennale

Left: Nena Saguil, Untitled (Abstract), 1972, collection of National Museum of the Philippines

Right: Fadjar Sidik, Dinamika Keruangan IX, 1974, collection of National Gallery of Indonesia

Six thousand miles away in Cebu – a city with tourism and maritime significance that does not pale in comparison to Venice – a larger collection of over a dozen works of Nena Saguil and Fadjar Sidik has been gathered, enacting an unlikely but memorable encounter between the two artists. Seeing their works side by side, Cosmic Concerns invites audiences to explore the cosmic imagination of Nena Saguil and Fadjar Sidik, revealing how their artistic practices transcend time and place to resonate with the universal human quest for meaning and connection amidst the vastness of the cosmos.

Download the press kit for Cosmic Concerns: Nena Saguil and Fadjar Sidik here.