ART WEAVE: Woven Atmospheres
Cordilleran weaving for the contemporary Philippine home
Installation view of ART WEAVE: Woven Atmospheres at LRI Design Plaza, Makati.
ART WEAVE: Woven Atmospheres ran from 23 to 31 March 2026 at LRI Design Plaza in Makati. Presented by Art Weave, Space ALT, and LRI Design Plaza, the exhibition features weavers, visual artists, and designers working at the intersection of Cordilleran textile tradition and contemporary craft.
Installation view of ART WEAVE: Woven Atmospheres at LRI Design Plaza, Makati.
Art Weave began in Baguio in 2022, when designer Twinkle Ferraren started running workshops that bridged Cordilleran weavers and visual artists through collaboration. After relocating to Baguio, a UNESCO Creative City for Arts, Ferraren began asking how the worlds of visual art and indigenous weaving might intersect, how Cordilleran weavers could sustain their craft in an increasingly fast-moving consumer landscape, and what new forms might emerge from placing the two disciplines in direct dialogue.
Scenes from the workshop in Baguio. Images courtesy of Art Weave.
The first Art Weave workshop and exhibition took place in June 2022 at the Mandeko Kito Artisan Market, University of Baguio, hosted by The Baguio Arts and Crafts Collective Inc (BACCI). Most recently, they delivered 37 one-of-a-kind handwoven tapestries for the Philippine Pavilion at the Osaka World Expo in 2025. Through these workshops, weavers and painters are paired directly, learning each other’s processes, exchanging techniques with the aim of generating new income streams for the weavers and keeping the tradition alive. Where earlier iterations focused on tapestry as wall art, ART WEAVE: Woven Atmospheres presented handwoven tapestries, rugs, throws, and furniture.
Ang Lupa ay Buhay by Fara Manuel-Nolasco. Image courtesy of Art Weave.
Installation view of Ang Lupa ay Buhay by Fara Manuel-Nolasco.
The artists in the exhibition approach this territory from different angles. Artist Fara Manuel-Nolasco showcased Ang Lupa ay Buhay, a work that draws on traditional folk weaving motifs—among them the bituwon, or star—and reinterprets the mata-mata, a traditional, diamond-shaped, or eye-like pattern, in a composition addressing indigenous land rights and the protection of ancestral territory. The technique is a hybrid of serigraphy and painting, deployed to achieve the kind of repetitive patterning characteristic of weaving.“Finding out how weavers construct and conceptualise motifs helped me understand the fluidity of the medium,” Manuel-Nolasco says. Through the collaboration with her weaving partner Nora Duculan, Manuel-Nolasco hoped to introduce asymmetry into tapestry practice, what she describes as space for unevenness through grouping, balance, movement.
Tara Lalaine-Natividad, Woven Visions: DAPIT HAPON, batik/weaving yarn, bamboo sticks, and rattan rings.
Multimedia artist Tara Lalaine-Natividad contributed Woven Visions, a large-scale tapestry that draws together the Ojo de Dios, the “God’s Eye” of Mesoamerican tradition, and the structure of the dreamcatcher. “What drew me to Art Weave was the opportunity to elevate weaving from a functional craft to a narrative art form,” Natividad explains. Working with the weavers allowed her to test how her own precisely structured designs would respond to the organic flow of the medium. “This collaboration was an exploration of shared knowledge: blending my interest in symbolic motifs with their expertise in structural integrity and ancestral patterns,” she adds. The work operates, in Natividad’s framing, as a form of spiritual architecture, an investigation into how different cultures use weaving to represent protection and vision.
ART WEAVE: Woven Atmospheres was on view from 23 to 31 March 2026 at LRI Design Plaza, Makati City. Visit their instagram to learn more about ART WEAVE and its future iterations.