Organizer: Silverlens New York
Type/Location: In Person / New York, NY
Description:
Silverlens is proud to present Galleon Trade, organized by Katey Acquaro, Silverlens New York Director, and on view June 26 – August 23, 2025 (Opening reception 26 June, 6-8pm). The exhibition draws its conceptual framework from the Spanish colonial Manila Galleon trade route, a historic network that connected the Philippines, Mexico, and California from the 16th to the 19th century. These voyages charted one of the earliest maps of globalization, carrying not just goods but also ideas, techniques, and cultural aesthetics. While shaped by legacies of colonization and displacement, the exhibition explores the parallels that have emerged across the Philippines, Latin America, and their diasporas in the United States—parallels forged through a shared history of geopolitics and exchange.
Gathering contemporary artists primarily from the principal stops of the galleon route, the exhibition becomes both a metaphor and a mechanism for contemporary exchange. Some artists turn directly to the materials and imagery of the trade—rope, spices—while others reflect its spirit through the act of scavenging, transforming construction materials and detritus into works of poetic resonance and formal precision. What Western frameworks might categorize as Arte Povera or Assemblage reflects a deeper shared ethos of resourcefulness, ingenuity, and resilience. California, a historic gateway for the Asia Pacific and Latin America, becomes a focal point of the show and a stage for connecting the Chicano and Filipino American communities of San Francisco and Los Angeles in a broader dialogue.
About the ArtistS:
Carmen Argote (b. 1981, Guadalajara, Mexico; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA) Argote's installations—including her Searching For The Willow Pattern series and Comforting Object—investigate inherited histories through domestic material and architectural form. Her work draws connections between personal memory and the cultural migration of objects and motifs, particularly those marked by colonial trade. Argote’s work has been in several recent exhibitions, including Flow States– LA TRIENAL 2024, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2024); Holding, Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, CA (2024); Experimentations: The Art of Controlled Procedures, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, CA (2024); I won’t abandon you, I see you, we are safe, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2023); and La Vida Secreta de las piedras, Commonwealth and Council, Mexico City, Mexico (2023).
Patricia Perez Eustaquio (b. 1977, Cebu, Philippines; lives and works in Benguet Province, Philippines) Eustaquio is known for her multidisciplinary works that demonstrate contrasting sensibilities and provide commentary on the mutability of perception, as well as on the constructs of desirability and how it influences life and culture. Eustaquio has gained recognition through several residencies abroad, including Art Omi in New York and Stichting Id11 of the Netherlands. She has been part of several notable exhibitions and presentations at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila; the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, France; and in the 2016 Singapore Biennale. Eustaquio will participate in the Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art opening in September 2025. Her work will be featured in Silverlens’ booth in the Premiere sector of Art Basel, Basel in June 2025.
Jorge Rosano Gamboa (b. 1984, Mexico City, Mexico; lives and works in Mexico City) Jorge Rosano Gamboa is an artist based in Mexico City, whose work departs from photographic thinking by expanding through painting, sculpture and installation, pointing to the importance of the relationship between the instant and its representation: the ritual of creating an image, its registration, its methods, and, above all, the very instant trapped in the form of an image/object. His works create fabricated and manipulated spaces and objects where absence becomes visible, as they are composed of images that seem to be suspended because they are only a trace, a remnant or a memory, where image and ghost are one and the same. His recent artistic endeavors delve into the vibrant and multifaceted realm of Mexican and Latin American culture, drawing profound inspiration from the rich artistic traditions of a mixed culture, the narratives of folklore, magical thinking and poetry. His recent solo exhibitions include Bulto/niebla/piel, Saenger Galeria, Mexico City, Mexico (2025); Interwingle Spectre, Lateral, Mexico City, Mexico (2024); En el En-Medio, LaNao, Mexico City, Mexico (2023); and LANDLORDS, Filet Space, London, UK (2018).
Patrick Martinez (b. 1980, Pasadena, CA, USA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA) Martinez contributes a large-scale, 10-foot-wide architectural painting that melds thick stuccoed surfaces with construction detritus—a visual language grounded in urban histories and cultural hybridity. Supplemented by two smaller existing works, his pieces explore the landscape of Los Angeles through the lens of Chicano and Filipino American identity. Patrick’s work is held in permanent collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA; the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; and the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, CA.
Elaine Navas (b. 1964, Manila, Philippines) Navas reimagines Magritte’s The Listening Room in her large-scale diptych, replacing the iconic apple with a monumental papaya. Her reinterpretation inserts Southeast Asian imagery into a Western surrealist canon, creating a humorous and poignant meditation on cultural substitution and visibility. Navas completed Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the Ateneo de Manila University in 1985 prior to taking up her second degree from University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts majoring in Painting in 1991. Navas was the recipient of Honorable Mention (2004, 2002) from Philip Morris Singapore Art Awards, Honorable Mention (1995) from Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards, and Juror’s Choice (1995, 1994) from the Art Association of the Philippines. Her recent solo exhibitions include Each A Small Universe, Drawing Room, Makati City, Philippines (2025); The Boat Is Empty, West Gallery, Quezon City, Philippines (2024); Found Objects, Art Informal, Makati City, Philippines (2023); and It Takes A Village, Finale Art File, Makati City (2022).
Bernardo Pacquing (b. 1967, Tarlac, Philippines; lives and works in Parañaque City, Philippines) Pacquing is an artist broadening the expressive possibilities of abstraction in painting and sculpture. Incorporating diverse found objects that challenge conventional perceptions of aesthetic representation, form, and value, his work displaces the idea of unequivocal forms, introducing possibilities for the coexistence of affirmations and denials. He was twice awarded the Grand Prize for the Art Association of the Philippines Open Art Competition (Painting, Non-Representation) in 1992 and 1999. He is also a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award in 2000, an award given to exemplary artists in the field of contemporary visual art.
Carlos Villa (b. 1936 – d. 2013, San Francisco, CA, USA) Villa was a San Francisco-born visual artist, grass-roots activist, curator, author, and educator. His groundbreaking artistic career challenged colonial perspectives and laid the foundation for artists to come. Villa received the first-ever major museum retrospective dedicated to the work of a Filipino American artist, which toured from the Newark Museum of Art to the San Francisco Art Institute and Asian Art Museum. Villa’s works were also included at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco, as well as at the 1976 American Bicentennial. Recent exhibitions of Villa’s work include East of the Pacific: Making Histories of Asian American Art, Amon Carter Museum of American Art (2025) and Cantor Arts Center (2022-2023); Remains of Surface, Silverlens New York (2023); and Carlos Villa: Worlds in Collision, Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ and Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, California (2022).
Jenifer K Wofford (b. San Francisco, CA, USA; lives and works in San Francisco, CA, USA) Jenifer K Wofford is an artist and educator who creates work defined by hybridity, history, calamity and global culture informed by her upbringing as a Filipina-American raised in Hong Kong, the UAE, Malaysia, and California, as well as her experience as a longtime educator in a diverse range of communities. She is one third of the Filipina-American artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. Her interdisciplinary practice encompassing her intercultural education incorporates the intersections and overlaps of drawing, performance, video, web and print. Her work is held in numerous private and public collections, including Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA; Meta Open Arts, San Francisco, CA; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH; Nora Eccles Harrison Museum, Logan, UT; San Francisco Arts Commission Civic Art Collection, San Francisco, CA; Hawaii State Foundation on Culture in the Arts, Art in Public Places Program, Honolulu, HI; and the Office of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Washington DC.
Registration:
To attend the event in person, please register here.