Lorebert “Maralita” Comision | Abril Valdemoro | Honey Maglalang

Pangsamantagal is made from three words: pansamantala (temporary); tagal (a long time); and pagsamantala (the act of taking advantage).

Honey Maglalang’s work examines autonomy and agency, and the ways people are controlled, measured, and seen as parts of a larger machinery. Lorebert “Maralita” Comision reflects on the fleeting nature of care and governance — on assistance that offers temporary relief while sustaining deeper forms of dependence. Abril Valdemoro, meanwhile, considers how ordinary people carry the weight of the nation’s systemic failures.

Together, their works describe a familiar condition in Philippine public life: assistance offered to those in need is too often treated as a debt to be repaid. Ayuda is neither a right nor a public duty. It is only a token in a political transaction.

The works in this exhibition examine these systems of reward and control. They reveal how power imagines, classifies, and manipulates people, especially the poor. In the hands of those in power, generosity is not always innocent or altruistic: a small comfort carries the weight of obligation; a gift is bait for loyalty, a vote, and ultimately their continued possession of power.

This is the political consequence of the poor’s precarity. When survival is difficult, patronage and false charity can outweigh the harder, slower work of demanding accountable governance. For those living with uncertainty, pansamantala matters more urgently than tagal. Weak institutions, entrenched dependency, and the cost of keeping the undeserving in office are irrelevant beside the demands of their immediate present.

Pangsamantagal asks us to consider what prolonged dependence, poverty, and fear do to the inner lives of those who must endure them — and who, ultimately, benefits from this vicious cycle.