DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 14 May 2026) — At the DAFI Artfest 2026’s Saudade, memory is preserved less in archive than in atmosphere: drifting through windows and staircases, in boats and bottles, materializing in old houses and fading light. Bodies dissolve into flora, objects attempt to hold longing, water moves, erodes, carries—breaching boundaries between body and landscape, architecture and affect, object and organism. Walking through the exhibit at La Herencia Davao Art & Events Pavilion along F. Torres St., one moves through fragments of longing: bodily, environmental, carried through objects, threatened by disappearance, unresolved. Organized by the Dabawenyo Artists Federation, Inc. (DAFI), this year’s Artfest gathers 15 art groups and galleries under the theme of saudade: “a deep longing for something absent, distant, or unremembered,” as curator Dadai Joaquin explained. The exhibition resists reducing nostalgia into sentimentality, understanding memory as porous and unstable—leaking into objects, landscapes, textures, and everyday spaces. “What unites these seemingly disparate images,” said Joaquin, “is the idea of passage—between places, generations, memories, and states of being.” One of the exhibit’s arresting works layers dense flora over the faint outline of a human face, almost burying the figure within roots and branches. The face emerges from within the foliage—not fully visible, impossible to ignore, haunted by memory as overgrowth. Through translucent textures of leaves, faces become semi-legible, framing memory as viewed through accumulation rather than clarity. One wall gathers weathered houses rendered in various iterations: rooftops leaning into one another, an old house submerged in shadow and rain. Pintal Samal’s exhibit notes read: “Every crack and stain reads like a small confession. Every window looks as if it has witnessed something it will never fully share.” In Aguilar’s Alaala, the house exists inside the eye, memory becomes architecture, roots beneath the house figure memory as rooted in perception. Across the exhibit, images of bottles recur: bottles on tables, beneath flowers, drifting through water, carrying fragments across time. Rivers reappear in multiple works; small boats drift through expanses of muted water. In Dimaclid’s With the Flow, two figures huddle in a narrow canoe, the water almost swallowing their outlines, resembling memory faded at the edges, clear toward the center. One striking piece transforms a lotus pod into something uncanny: its clustered seed cavities resemble eyes against an orange background. In the context of Saudade, seeds resemble eyes, eyes house houses, flora conceal eyes, windows behave like eyes. The exhibit is associative rather than rational; objects become emotionally charged through repetition. A fruit is never just fruit beside a flooded blue wash, a stairwell, a door half-open, a bottle. Objects blur into emotional landscapes; windows become thresholds; fruits and flowers appear lush yet transient. Many artists worked outside their usual visual languages, assigned themes through random draw lots, intentionally disrupting familiarity. “Some artists have never painted flowers,” Joaquin said. “Yet they’re given flowers as the theme… So a chance for growth.” This tension between comfort and experimentation gives the exhibit its energy, foregrounding negotiation: between artist and theme, memory and reinvention. DAFI President Lito Pepito described the Artfest as continuing despite social and economic uncertainty. Former DAFI VP Victor Secuya reflected on economic realities artists face today, emphasizing the importance of sustaining artistic communities. Saudade transforms its exploration of longing into a portrait of a creative community enduring together. Near the end of her remarks, Joaquin described saudade as “the quiet space between what an artist knows and what an artist has yet to uncover.” The exhibit lingers most powerfully within that space—in doorways half-opened, rivers still in motion, houses that remain after memory fades. Saudade will run until May 16. (Bea Gatmaytan / MindaNews)
