The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Boy Villasanta
What a way to celebrate Women’s Month!
For a progressive Filipino woman like versatile artist Gem Suguitan, winning the Grand Prize of the first ever Sining Filipina, an all-female art competition in the Philippines held recently at the SM Aura in Taguig City is like conquering, embodying and advocating the ideals of equality before the sexes.
Because Gem’s Non-Figurative entry to the contest, “Layers of Experiences,” a painting in acrylic, perfectly conveys her thoughts and feelings about gender emancipation.
Suguitan’s art work is a testament of her practicing her theoretical consumption about male and female struggles for fairness.
“As a woman I stand head up high with my individual beliefs on what is fair and just to make man and woman on equal footing,” philosophized Gem in one of our personal conversations.
This National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Subcommissioner on Museum is a role model of a Filipina who is firm and unwavering in her decisions in life as an independent and courageous person especially in difficult situations.
Aside from her penchant for the conservation and preservation of cultural heritage and traditions, Gem is also a writer, a teacher, a historian, a filmmaker, among other vocations.
Sining Filipina art contest is a collaboration of the SM Supermalls, BDO and Zonta International Makati and the Environs.
“Layers of Experiences” and all art pieces of Sining Filipina are available for public viewing at SM Aura until March 22, 2024.
Gem is the Arts and Culture Editor of Market Monitor.