Programming
Andi Vicente
Altars for Becoming / Mga Altar ng Pagiging
Over the course of a month, an altar will transform Sainte-Cunégonde Park. This altar will serve as a living portal, not a monument or a static shrine, but a co-created structure that invites curiosity and reimagination.
Over the course of a month, an altar will transform Sainte-Cunégonde Park. Not a monument or an immobile sanctuary, but a living portal: a structure shaped collectively, opening a space for curiosity, imagination, and reinvention. Inspired by Filipino altar practices, it will become a threshold between memory, the present, and possible futures. It will make room for the many faces of the self, shaped by community, foundational elements, stories left in the shadows, diaspora, displacement, and desire.
Andi Vicente invites the public to reflect on heritage, migration, transformation, and joy as a form of resistance. Through touch, voice, inscription, offering, or gesture, everyone will be invited to leave a trace, expanding our understanding of the connections that bind us and of the ways we contribute to a shared memory.
Over four weeks, the altar will evolve through four themes inspired by words, symbols, and concepts drawn from Andi Vicente’s Filipino cultural references. Each week opens up a new way of thinking about what we carry, what we transform, and what we might imagine together.
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September 17–24 — Lingling-o: Creating Beyond Our Foundations
The lingling-o, a precolonial Austronesian Filipino symbol, is associated with creation, safety, and abundance. It opens the project with an invitation to let go of what no longer serves us and to imagine what might emerge differently.
What are you ready to let go of? What must be undone for something new to become possible? What could we create together beyond the structures we have inherited?
September 24–October 1 — Alaala: What We Carry
In Filipino, alaala refers to a memory, a precious keepsake, or an object to which we are attached—a testament to memory. The word can also evoke doubt, hesitation, or anxiety. This week turns toward the stories we carry and those that are seeking to become something else.
What story do you carry within you that no longer defines you? What object in your life carries the trace of a difficult story? What story is seeking to become something else?
October 1–8 — Sariling anino: Meeting Our Shadow
Sariling anino, or the work of the shadow, invites us to remain long enough within the tension, discomfort, and back-and-forth movement of our own shadow to discover what it might have to reveal. It is an invitation to look closely at what we might otherwise prefer to push away.
What part of yourself are you afraid to look at? What wound are you ready to meet with tenderness? What emerges when you stop pushing away what makes you uncomfortable?
October 8–15 — Walang-galang: Stepping Outside the Frame
The Filipino term walang-galang refers to someone who is disrespectful, rude, or lacking in good manners. It can also evoke the choice to step away from what is expected of us rather than conforming to the opinions or narratives of others. The final week opens a space for play, excess, absurdity, and gestures that disrupt convention.
What would you do if you stopped wondering whether you were doing things the right way? What idea seems unreasonable, crazy, or extravagant, but might still be worth trying?
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Week by week, the altar will transform through the presences, gestures, and traces that come to join it. Little by little, it will become a collective, embodied archive, where memories and inheritances meet the imaginings of what is still coming into being.
