“We artists are faced with the challenge of making Davao City Paris of the Philippines,” painter Victor Secuya said during yesterday’s Kapihan sa Davao held at the Rysus Café, SM City.
Secuya said he has just come back from Tokyo, Japan “where everything is so urbanized and all roads are smooth as silk.” He said it is the same thing in Canada where every building has a sculpture and everything is clean.
When he came back to Davao, he said, what welcomed him were the wires all over the electric posts and everything chaotic unimaginable in a first world city. “Davao has a lot of potentials but not in the level of the first world,” he said.
However, he said, the burden of exploring Davao City’s potential and making it the center of art in the country lies in the shoulders of the local artists.
“It is our responsibility to move Davao’s art scene because if we will not do it then who will,” Secuya said.
Secuya said the city can be the center of arts to include theater, dance, architecture, painting and sculpture in the country if the Dabawenyos only work together “with a laser-beam kind of discipline”.
Secuya, along with artist Kublai Millan, is set to display at least 20 of his original and reproduction paintings at the Davao City International Airport on August 8 with the theme “Spirit of Davao’. This is a prelude to the week-long Kadayawan sa Davao celebration from August 17 to 23 this year.
“While the Kadayawan is something great for the city it is the way we live, wake up early to clean up our surroundings and practice discipline that we become at par with highly urbanized cities,” he said.(
