Photo exhibit tackles sex, stigma, human sexuality
In his book “Everything is Tuberculosis,” author John Green writes that “illness is a defining feature of human life.” Yet in most conversations about illnesses and diseases (news about rising HIV cases, for example), human elements are often overshadowed by numbers and technical jargon.
Davao City-based photographer and artist Glenn Magallano’s recent work hopes to spark change. In celebration of Pride Month, he takes a step back from the busy narrative about HIV to engage the audience.
Showcasing male figures through printed photographs, Magallano asks the viewer: Is this porn? Or art?
More than an exhibition, his choreographed visual experience, which he fondly calls “P’ART,” is a compelling response to the delicate conversation about sex, stigma, and human sexuality.
In “P’ART, Magallano mounts images of faceless men, vulnerable in many ways to disease, the environment, and judgment. The essence of the exhibit, he says, lies in the ability of the audience to participate and ask questions.
“Every photo you see is filtered through your history, your shame, your curiosity, and your rules,” Magallano said. To him, the audience’s reaction, expressed through sticker labels and maybe gasps or snickers, is the heart of the exhibit.
“P’ART” is a culmination of Magallano’s four years of work, photographing men from X (formerly Twitter) who are active, anonymous, and uninhibited in “alter” communities.
Raw and bold
His contribution to the HIV conversation marks meaning through partnership with communities like Love Yourself’s Jefferyi, whose volunteers and staff ran HIV tests on site.
Magallano’s photography is raw and bold. He manipulates print media through upcycling, collaging, and repetitive printing. His “Garden of Eve” series superimposes male genitalia against flowers, produced through printing two images on the same canvas. Plastic butterflies add texture to a bigger piece featuring genitalia in grids.
Some pieces were brought to life with discarded materials like fast food bags and medical leaflets from PreP bottles.
Wilfred Tanedo, visual artist and curator at the the La Herencia Davao art space and resource center, described Magallano’s work as leaning toward its controversial theme “not for shock value, but to put it in a level of understanding, compassion and exacting humanity.
“Nudity here is not an end, but a means to disrupt, to equalize, and ultimately, to humanize,” Tanedo said. “The exhibit also looks into safe sex practices, self-love, protection, male liberation, and the subculture known as alters that invites viewers to consider the nude body—male, queer, and nonbinary—not as spectacle, but as story, as resistance, as reflection.”
“P’ART” runs until June 22 at La Herencia, F. Torres Street, Davao City.
