Nune Alvarado: Salted Wounds and Bitter Sugar is a testament to the enduring presence of the artist and his works to the Philippine art world. The exhibition is a nod to the tribute film that was premiered at VIVA ExCon in 2021 documenting the world of the artist.

Born in Sagay, Negros Occidental in 1950, Alvarado embodies the ethos of the sea-side town in his paintings. Central to his works are the societal and environmental matters sugar cane workers encounter as they work under aristocratic landowners. They are painted in a stylized, emblematic manner — as if the artist is in deep reverence to them, recalling what art critic Alice Guillermo referred to as the “theology of struggle.” This manner of figuration has come to distinguish Alvarado from his contemporaries and have formed his own “personal idiom” which identifies the artist’s concurrence with the peasant folk.

Rightfully so, it is the social implications embedded in his canvasses that make them irreplaceable. They are encoded with complex iconological strata that could have only come from Alvarado. Away from the classical realist depiction of landscapes of the countryside, his work is an index of profound comprehension of the life-world present in front of him in Negros. It reveals his positionality among his subjects as an artist who is entangled with the economic and political conditions that continue to persist in his hometown.

As his work discloses a kind of understanding of the world only Alvarado can illustrate, our attention is also drawn to the many unanswered and disputed conditions of his subjects; how bitter is this sugar and how long have the hands who grapple with them been grazed with salt? The messenger is about to go, but has his message been received and given the notice it deserves?”