Today I Learned: Iloilo Business Park Got the Nod as the Province's Arts Capital
Iloilo might be the place to unearth some of the country's most potent, earnest expressions of art.
by JV Ordoñez
Published on Aug 7, 2026
When I got invited to experience what was described to us as the arts and culture official center of Iloilo, as someone who had never been to the province, it seemed better to head into the experience with an empty head and to clear all of my preconceptions of Iloilo that were limited to mouthwatering La Paz batchoy, a bunch of old churches, and the Dinagyang festival.
I have a good friend who is an Ilonggo and went to high school at one of the prominent Catholic institutions there, and he said that it wasn't too different from Manila and I would feel right at home in the urbanized city.
For a bit of recent context, July 9 saw Iloilo Mayor Raisa Treñas-Chu's Executive Order No. 021 declaring Iloilo Business Park the city's official Center of Arts and Culture. The 72-hectare Megaworld township had for years been spearheading a movement to provide avenues and platforms for local Iloilo-based artists to thrive at exhibitions, festivals, public art, and a running collaborations with grassroots art collectives.
The folks at Megaworld briefed us that the township would be adorned with street art and indoor installations from these domestic artists within nearby office buildings.
Frankly speaking, when companies aim to execute these campaigns, they usually result in mall-adjacent decoration instead of honest-to-goodness statements of a culture.
It turned out to be the opposite when our stroll through Iloilo Business Park became an exploration of regional flavors and fully textured artworks that you would probably look twice at in some of the biggest art festivals nationally.
The art trail itself started small, inside the lobbies of Megaworld's own office buildings, before it spread out into the murals and painted crossings I'd been walking on all night. Over at Festive Walk Mall, the atrium installation reimagines the paraw sailboat from the regatta as a canvas instead of a vessel.
The opening salvo would be the imposing Pagsinapol piece in the middle of the township. This is a twelve-meter spiral of brushed steel wound around a reflective pond shaped like a paraw sail caught mid-turn, with a bronze figure planted at the peak holding a torch up into the dark. AR Sculptura's contribution to the art movement went up July 17 at the Festive Walk Road Roundabout, described by the husband-and-wife team of Margarette Albacete-Pampliega and Joseph Carl Albert Pampliega.
The 12-meter public art landmark "Pagsinapol" in the middle of Iloilo Business Park by art group AR Sculptura
Another compelling display of artistry at the trail was the distinct penchant for using indigenous weaving techniques by the prominent collective of Antiqueño visual artists called Rahmag.
One piece stitched two overlapping portraits into a checkerboard weave of woven paper strips, tagged "Baraka" on the placard. One of our other favorites is my Dr. Maria "Mae" Tamayo-Panes, a tourism advocate and mixed-media artist who is also in the process of publishing a children's book, which is evident in the whimsical and sometimes even Burton/Edgar Allan Poe-esque figures, such as her depiction of a crow in near-fauvist orange and red under a swirling maroon sun.
Some of the gripping and riveting works are found sprawling the interiors of Iloilo Business Park.
The hospitality side has caught up too. Belmont Hotel Iloilo, newly opened, works Ilonggo art into every guest room and runs a dedicated gallery for Jose Mari Chan, still one of the city's most beloved exports.
IBP is also home to the Iloilo Museum of Contemporary Art, which is the first museum that is host to these ambitious local pieces. Some notable names to have put up some of their art in the institution are national artist Ben Cab and fashion icon Patis Tesoro.
Megaworld's township has already been stamped as the microcosm and the place for a renaissance to happen without a lot of Filipinos even knowing about it.
I found myself in a loop of backtracking three blocks just to look again or getting frozen in a moment as I burrowed myself into each distinct experience Ilonggo artists poured into every wall on that trail.
Esquire PH's resident music scribe, wristwatch disciple, and essayist fluent in niche internet subcultures and Philippine politics.