Gathering: Political Writing on Art and Culture

Marian Pastor Roces
with an introduction by Rustom Bharucha and foreword by Elena Mirano

Marian Pastor Roces is one of the most original thinkers in Southeast Asia on the interactions of politics, privilege, state patronage, creativity, tradition and contemporary art. An art historian, museum director, and cultural theorist she has shown a keen sensitivity to the relations of power between creators and mediators of art and culture.

The book is the first ­ever collection of 43 essays from 1974 through to 2018 by Roces, bringing together key pieces in a body of work that is sustained and unrelenting in its commitment to critique, in a variety of contexts.

“At once long overdue and necessary in its volatile immediacy ... a constellation of specific interventions in time, embodied and fully-lived ... a sustained provocation on art, life and politics.”
– Rustom Bharucha

"[Marion Roces] has shaped the way the Philippines thinks about art... this anthology assembles a series of writings that reflect a multiplicity of critically rigorous and often provocative interventions into Philippine art and its byproducts... Across Roces’s 40-plus years in criticism, her relentless commitment to change – whether in art, culture or politics – is exhilarating. Gathering refreshingly transcends any insipid ‘art for art’s sake’ arguments. Instead, art is the locus from which Roces vocalises the difficult opinions others are afraid to say." 
- Marv Recinto, Art Review

Marian Pastor Roces is an art historian, museum expert and cultural theorist. Her most recent project is the Bangsamoro Museum in Cotabato City, Philippines, which presents the culture and historical experience of the former Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

Rustom Bharucha is an independent writer, director, dramaturg and cultural critic based in Kolkata, India.

Elena Mirano is professor emeritus at the College of Arts and Letters
at the University of the Philippines

Publication Year: 2020
324 pp / 210 x 165 mm
Hardback
ISBN: 978­-971-­955-­596-­4

Distributed by NUS Press for the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila and ArtAsiaPacific, Hong Kong.