Baguio City’s 2021 Ibagiw Creative Festival exhibition is anchored on the theme: Alimuom – the sweet smell that permeates the earth after the touch of a gentle summer rain. Like an unexpected homecoming, it’s a perfume that evokes intense emotions, and memories come flooding back to us. For some, it may be an overpowering miasma, a musky odor associated with illness, but no one can deny that it is also the scent of the earth, a reminder that the place that we are in, our home, is alive and well.

Part memory, part nostalgia, the artists go beyond a mere representation of the physical visible world, but also imbue it with personal history through a symbolic shorthand embodying their character and inner spirit to bring audiences into the more intimate spaces of their lives. Alimuom interrogates values and assumptions about the contemporary world, its spaces of care, fragile ecology and futurity.

The City of Baguio was designated by UNESCO as a Creative City for Crafts and Folk Arts in 2017 — the first city in the Philippines to be awarded membership to UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

Gallery 2600 hosts exhibitions by emerging, prominent and under-recognized visual arts practitioners in the region today. The gallery takes pride in the diversity of media and vernacular explorations shown at the space. The Ibagiw Creative Festival, held annually, features an extensive contemporary art exhibition, craft fair, community events and fora that brings into focus the state of the creative industry and their role in the region today.