Coinciding with the second edition of Art Fair Philippines last week were a whole swathe of other openings at museums and galleries across the Philippine capital. Of particular note was “Complicated,” an exhibition at the Lopez Museumin Pasig City curated by Ricky Francisco and Ethel Villafranca, that consisted of commissioned works by three guest artists strategically and stealthily inserted into an existing display of works from the museum collection by late 19th Century and 20th Century modern masters like Juan Luna, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, Ang Kiukok, J. Elizalde Navarro, and Bencab.

Paintings, videos, and mixed media assemblages by Leslie de Chavez, charcoal drawings on paper by Mike Adrao, and a video installation by Ea Torrado were interposed with selected quotes drawn from Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism, alluding to the Philippines’ turbulent history of successive imperial subjection and cultural colonization, while offering wry, oblique, and sometimes ironically distant echoes of issues and themes tackled by older works from the Lopez collection.

Though the postcolonial critiques embodied by these three younger artists are by no means original, this method of presentation implicates them in a larger historical context from which there seems to be no escape, while also structurally mirroring the struggle against and anxiety over what the Filipino nationalist Jose Rizal called a sense of cultural “belatedness.”

Of the three guest artists, Leslie de Chavez’s interventions offered the most satisfyingly fleshed out volley-and-response to the sprinkling of Filipino art history included in the collection. Hung next to Hidalgo’s oil on canvas “Full Study of Per Pacem et Libertatem” (1903) was de Chavez’s “Not Everything That Glitters is Gold (After Per Pacem et Libertatem by FR Hidalgo)” (2014), a “remake” in a mockingly period-looking tempera style with the phrase “benevolent assimilation” spelled out in widely spaced capital letters arranged in the form of an inverted pyramid.

Across the room, “State of Your Liberty” (2014), a toppled Statue of Liberty unceremoniously wedged upside down into a wooden framed support with a miniature diorama-like model of a dilapidated, shambolic slum perched on top, combines a trenchant, satirical edge that recalls the best of Jake and Dinos Chapman, with references to the local vernacular urban landscape of Manila’s less salubrious districts.

In de Chavez’s own words, his works “entail the resurfacing of historical templates, re-examining contemporary social discourse and rediscovering introspection as methods to pin down the truth about the many realities we Filipinos experience” (from Arario Gallery’s catalogue for his 2011 solo show, “God is Busy”). Elsewhere, Lee Eun-joo, a curator from Korea — de Chavez is currently represented by Arario Gallery in Seoul — speaks of the peculiarly Pinoy dilemma of having been stripped of identity “through mindless acceptance of Western-centered power structures”, and how his works “mockingly and inversely apply commercial advertisement approaches and political propaganda to the perfection of social criticism.”

Born in Manila in 1978, de Chavez is one of an increasing number of Filipino contemporary artists who are winning steady international acclaim. His recent solo exhibitions include “God Is Busy” at Arario Gallery in 2011, “Buntong Hininga” at Silverlens in Manila in 2010, and “Banana Republic” at Avanthay Contemporary in Zurich in 2008. He also participated in the 3rd Asian Art Biennial at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan in 2011, and the Nanjing Biennale 2010.

“Complicated” runs at the Lopez Museum and Library in Manila through August 2.