Echoing Messages is an iteration of an earlier exhibition at Mugna gallery which gathered artists who use printmaking as both medium and metaphor to confront the pressures of contemporary life. In this iteration, the artist explore themes of economic precarity, displacement, labor, memory, and legacy. The formal processes inherent to print – repetition, impression, reversal, layering – become conceptual tools for exploring shared concerns, unfolding as conversations across the exhibition.

Marz Aglipay and Hershey Malinis both turn to food not simply as subject, but as a critical lens on the economies of survival and the politics of value. In Market Intersection, Aglipay draws from her residency in Roxas City to depict hazy renderings of fruits, vegetables, and bangus in local markets. These loosely defined forms resist clarity, reflecting how commodities are abstracted—distanced from the systems and labor that bring them into circulation. The lack of visual definition becomes a pointed critique of how market forces obscure the realities behind the goods we consume. Malinis, meanwhile, investigates value through her series, Sardinas. Originally a technical study, it evolved into a quiet chronicle of economic survival. Each print is stamped with the price of the sardine can at the time of purchase, transforming into a personal archive of inflation and necessity. Like Aglipay, Malinis calls attention to the everyday, showing how even the smallest items bear the weight of broader socio-economic conditions. Whether through the imagery of a bustling market or a humble pantry shelf, both artists ask: what determines worth, and who decides?

Marge Chavez, Tin Palattao and Gabi Nazareno expand the possibilities of print, using it to explore material transformation, growth, and legacy. In Cascade, Chavez suspends hundreds of reduction prints of the baho-baho shrub in air, forming a floating bouquet. By detaching print from the wall, she evokes the organic, proliferative nature of her subject, reimagining print as immersive and ephemeral. Palattao’s Sa Paglipas Mabubuo Muli similarly embraces repetition, assembling a dense and intricate printed foliage from a singular printed element to trace a process of quiet reconstruction. Growth here is slow, cumulative, and shaped by labor. It becomes a metaphor to her persistence in building and rebuilding of her self. Nazareno, in Alternative Progeny: State II, embeds a synthetic multi-panel print within a structure of abaca fiber, proposing that new ideas of progeny can exist alongside traditional ones. Featuring the multi-panel figures of a man and a woman—images that could, in theory, be printed endlessly—Nazareno makes a deliberate choice to cut the metaphorical bloodline. In doing so, the work critiques inherited expectations around reproduction and legacy, asserting that continuity can be found not only through lineage, but through acts of creation, care, and intentional refusal.

Fara Manuel, Irma Lacorte, and Kristen Cain, turn print into a language of memory, distance, and emotional presence. Manuel’s Transfixed captures the quiet tension of diaspora—of being physically present in one place, while emotionally anchored elsewhere. The work holds stillness and movement in delicate balance. Lacorte, in a piece inspired by a childhood question—“Why is the mist down there?”—plays with light and visibility. Her prints reveal themselves only under specific conditions, mirroring the elusive nature of memory and how meaning often hovers just out of reach. Cain’s Wish celebrates the resilient strength of everyday people who persevere through setbacks, failures, and false starts. The work features floating dandelion seeds—tiny vessels cradling our innermost hopes and prayers, cast upon the wind with uncertain destination. Created as a collage of monoprints on overdyed, repurposed fabric, Wish embodies Cain’s long-standing commitment to recycling found materials such as beach trash and discarded textiles. 

Together, these artists form a quiet chorus of resonance. In different ways, they respond to the exhibition’s original prompt: What do you want more of in the coming year? What message do you want echoed? Their works trace the marks of care, survival, longing, and transformation. Speaking through the different processes of printmaking, they remind us that the most enduring messages are built layer by layer – echoed, repeated, and felt over time.

Words by Gabi Nazareno

Works by Fara Manuel, Gabi Nazareno, Hershey Malinis, Irma Lacorte, Kristen Cain, Marge Chavez, Marz Aglipay, and Tin Palattao