Inside the Culture House at Vogue Village, Filipino Art Takes Center Stage

The Vogue Threads exhibition brings together the Philippines’ artistic traditions through sculpture, music, dance, painting, literature, and film.

Tucked in between the Vogue Lounge and Allure’s House of Experts, the Culture House at Vogue Village explores the various disciplines of art through a distinctly Filipino lens. Curated by scenographer and exhibition designer Gino Gonzales, Dance, Music, Sculpture, Literature, and Film come alive inside the house’s rooms.

Below, see the various art disciplines inside Vogue Village’s Culture House.

Sculpture: Romy Afable

At Vogue Threads, kayas, a wood-whittling handicraft hailing from Pakil, Laguna, is showcased inside the Sculpture room. Inside, master whittler Romy Afable demonstrates the craft in real time, where he transforms shaved wood into a señorita fan. He primarily works with kayétana, a type of wood known for its durability and malleability.

Music and Dance: Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group

From Afable’s Sculpture room, guests can head over to the Music Room, where the Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group presents nine performances across the archipelago. It opens with music from Northern Luzon, followed by a Visayan repertoire with indigenized Western music, and finishes with Mindanaoan music from its Islamic communities.

Similarly, in the Dance room, the group performs three numbers that draw from the primary islands of the Philippines. The first performance hails from Northern Luzon: Bumayah, a thanksgiving dance and ritual offering to celebrate a bountiful rice harvest, general community well-being, and major life milestones. From the Visayas is Kuratsa, a mix of indigenous Filipino movements and Spanish courtship rituals. The last one is Pangalay, a Tausug dance from Mindanao, which is known for its intricate hand movements that are emphasized by wearing metal claws or janggay.

Painting: Tanyak-Tanyak

On the second floor of the Culture House, Yakan musician, weaver, and dancer Adelaida Ahaddas welcomes guests into the Painting room, where she demonstrates the traditional Yakan face-painting ritual, tanyak-tanyak.

The ritual is performed at weddings and other celebrations, linking body, loom, and spirit. Using white paint, diamonds, dots, and crescents are painted on the faces of the bride and groom, forms that echo the symbolic patterns of Yakan textiles that communicate cultural identity and ancestral connection.

Ahaddas is the niece of two GAMABA, or National Living Treasures awardees, Uwang Ahaddas, honored for traditional Yakan music, and Ambalang Ausalin, honored for traditional Yakan weaving.

Literature: Rosie Sula

At Vogue Threads, National Living Treasure, Tboli artist, and cultural activist Rosie Godwino Sula lends her voice to the Literature room with Tboli chanting. The oral tradition transmits stories, memory, customary law, and ancestral wisdom. The hegulung, a two-stringed lute, accompanies it, along with the klintang, a set of gongs, or the sludoy, a bamboo zither. Sula is particularly known for chanting the Tudbulul, a lengthy epic performed by those who have reached a level of command.

Film: Kidlat Tahimik

Lastly, the Film room showcases National Artist Kidlat Tahimik’s award-winning film, Perfumed Nightmare. A semi-biographical Filipino comedy drama, the film is a critique of Western capitalism and a reclamation of ancestral powers. The film planted the seed of what Tahimik calls the indo-genius “sariling dwende,” a liberating inner spirit who guides one toward truth, knowledge, and the foundational values of kapwa.