Carlos Celdran's Creative Life, In The Eyes of His Widow Tesa

(SPOT.ph) For Tesa Celdran, mounting an exhibition of her late husband Carlos Celdran’s works seven years after his passing was less about closure and more about continuation: of his voice, his work, and the conversations the man sparked.

Simply called Carlos Celdran 1972-2019, the show, ongoing at Archivo 1984 in Karrivin Studios only until April 22, features rare and never-before-seen works of the artist, activist, tour guide, and once controversial Manileño. It includes cartoons, photographs, collages, and sketches– some monumental works that stretch up to eight feet, others as humble and intimate as sketches on pad paper.

Rather than constructing a retrospective from scratch, Tesa, Carlos’s partner for many years, returned to what the artist himself had already began. She looked back at the works he’d previously shown with Archivo gallery in 2018, a year before his passing, and moved from there. “He didn’t show everything,” Tesa says. “So I thought, might as well just bring it all out.”

The drawings she found, says Tesa, were overwhelming in range—comics, studies of nature, street scenes, and intricately rendered religious processions that blended seamlessly with images of Banaue Rice Terraces and schools of fish drifting through imagined oceans. 

This decision to “bring it all out” shaped the exhibition’s tone: less curated in the traditional sense, more revelatory. Overall it still presents a thoughtful selection, and a fuller sense of Carlos’s creative life—one that extends beyond framed works on walls.

For Tesa, Carlos’ body of work was never limited to finished pieces. It lived in diaries, in constant doodling, in the habit of drawing even in the middle of conversation. “I never saw him not writing something down or drawing something,” she recalls. Seven years after his death, she still finds doodles by Carlos sandwiched in books he read.

She found rows upon rows of caricatures he left behind—doodles of all kinds of people paired with sharp, often humorous captions: “He’s a secret fan of Kris Aquino”, one would say, or “Her deodorant failed.” These are set alongside more serious observations: “He thinks passion is something to be controlled” or “She isn’t safe in her own home.”

“If you look at his personalisms there are always comments on society,” Tesa shares. “That is, I think, one of his legacies…he always had something to say.”

On one side of the gallery hang 27 framed vintage postcards of a bygone Manila, likely from the 1970s and 80s, each paired with its own wry caption that comments on the price of “progress.” A postcard of the Chinese Garden in Luneta says “No McDonald’s plastic cups floating on the pond.”  A photo of the Oblation Plaza in UP says “No reflecting pool.” A postcard of Intramuros with the City Hall clock tower on the  background says “No SM City Manila.”

Tesa jokes that Carlos sometimes had too much to say, but she emphasizes they were “always about wanting to make things better than what they were.”

Some photographs show the wear and tear of time but the images still hold power. One is of artist Santi Bose sitting in his studio hunched over something he was working on. Another is a Carlos self-portrait where he is shown wearing a Halloween costume paired with a mischievous grin.

“The photographs were difficult to part with because he doesn't do photographs,” Tesa confesses. Even more difficult to let go of were the collages that she and Carlos worked on together. 

The star of the Carlos Celdran show is an eight-foot painting-collage titled Sueño de Manila (2017). From afar, it reads as a lush, vibrant painting; up close, it reveals itself as a meticulous construction of magazine clippings. Butterfly stickers from a children’s sticker pack scattered across blue skies, while the faces of Angelina Jolie and Matthew McConaughey replace those of religious icons. A ship cuts through the composition, carrying cutouts of wine bottles, paintings, and dinnerware. Tesa notes that even within the work’s layered imagery, there are personal markers: you can tell who inspired a figure by the hands. The thick, fleshy hands signaled Carlos himself; the thin, elegant ones were hers. 

Carlos’ approach to collaging was, in typical fashion, both practical and inventive. When asked why he shifted to cutting and assembling images rather than drawing them, his answer was simple: “Because it’s faster. I don’t have to draw it.”

What emerges most vividly from Tesa’s recollections is not just the finished work, but the way Carlos worked.She describes his collages as very much layered—sometimes literally eight layers deep—built from paper, paint, and time. Pieces could take years to complete, constantly evolving. The Sueno de Manila, eventually shown at the first and only Manila Biennale Carlos himself put together, underwent continuous updating. “I’d think it was done,” says Tesa, “and he’d still be painting on it.”

Various video works are also part of the Archivo 1984 show–clips of Carlos doing his famous If These Walls Could Talk walking tours of Intramuros. Here, he is dressed in a barong and a top hat, effortlessly weaving together history, humor, and biting commentary. On loop as well was his thesis from the Rhode Island School of Design, Walang Pamagat Jakob’s Ladder—a performance piece he wrote and performed with friends, exploring art, culture, and the shaping of Filipino identity and space.

Gathered together, they form a portrait of Carlos as a kind of modern-day Renaissance figure—an artist who moved fluidly between forms, using not just visual art but performance as a way of engaging with and speaking back to society.

Tesa and Carlos met in 1998 at an exhibit opening at the Ayala Museum. Carlos then was in the early stages of his art-making, specifically doing collages and maquettes, which were small sculptures with light. The night they met, he brought her home and showed her his studio. She calls it “the longest one night stand ever,” the two having been inseparable from then on.

The years since Carlos’s death have not softened the loss so much as reshaped it. Tesa describes her grief as something that arrives in waves—unexpected, often triggered by the political climate or the absence of his commentary. “I miss his wit,” she says. “‘What did he say now?’ That’s what I miss the most.”

And yet, there is also acceptance. A recognition that his intensity and brilliance may never have been meant for a long life. “When someone shines so bright...” she says, and then leaves the thought unfinished.

The exhibition becomes, in this context, a way of redirecting that energy outward. Not as a memorial frozen in time, but as a conscious act of sharing. “It’s not to make money,” she emphasizes. “It’s so more people can have his work. The more people have his work, the more people will remember him.”

“He taught me how to dream big,” Tesa says, looking back. “He was a dreamer.”

She recounts a few of the dreams they achieved together. “He said, ‘I want my name in lights and you beside me in New York.’ I said sure, let’s make it happen.” The dream became Livin’ la Vida Imelda, a one-man show in New York City centered on the lavish lifestyle of Imelda Marcos. 

Their next dream? To change the world. And they tried: through the cultural movement surrounding the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012. A vocal supporter, Carlos Celdran used performance as protest—most notably in 2010, when he held up a “Damaso” sign inside Manila Cathedral, challenging the Church’s opposition to the bill. The act led to his arrest and eventual exile, but also underscored his role in shaping public discourse around one of the country’s most divisive issues.

So what now for Tesa Celdran? Are there more works to show, more dreams to chase? “Now I think, should I do more?” she muses. “But I said, you know what? I think that’s enough. You’re welcome. Now it’s time to share him with the rest of the world.”

This sense of continuation extends beyond the exhibition itself. Tesa hopes to channel the proceeds of the show into a new creative space—a studio in Binondo, ideally in the heart of Chinatown. The vision is familiar: an open, living workspace where artists can gather, talk, and create. A space that echoes the one she and Carlos once shared inside Malate's Syquia Apartments. “It was always open,” she says. “You could come, paint, talk… there was always an exchange.”

At the same time, she continues to build her own practice. Like her late husband, Tesa has taken up collaging as her primary medium, shaped deeply by his influence. She admits she never had his speed when it came to drawing, and had to rely on a scholarship to study art, though she proudly notes she was president of her school’s art club for two consecutive years. It was during the pandemic that her work took on new momentum. While going through old belongings, she rediscovered stacks of magazine clippings she used to send Carlos while he was in Spain.

“I said, you know what? Maybe I’ll start painting,” she recalls. “Three shows later, all sold out. I said, ‘Wow, I’m an official artist. I’ve sold work.’”

In the end, the Carlos show does what Carlos always did best—it invites people in, then asks them to look closer. Not just at the work on the walls, but at themselves, at the city, at the systems they move within. It resists closure in the same way his life and practice did: open-ended, restless, still in conversation.

The exhibit runs until April 22 at Archivo 1984 5/F Karrivin Plaza 2316 Chino Roces Ave Makati City. Gallery hours are 2 to 6PM. Visit @archivo1984 on Instagram to book a visit.