Ilarde, Nilo

Born in Manila in 1960, Nilo Ilarde is an indispensable pillar of the Philippine conceptual art community and a vital bridge across multiple creative generations. He sharpened his formal visual sensibilities at the University of the Philippines in the late 1970s. It was during these formative years that Ilarde became an integral part of the legendary late-night intellectual circles at Nanette’s, where hours spent drinking beer and debating aesthetics with Roberto Chabet fundamentally opened new doors for his practice.

Ilarde successfully balances an elite, non-conformist studio output with significant cultural stewardship. He is widely respected as an exceptional "exhibition maker" whose curatorial layouts treat walls like giant collages where shapes, colors, and narratives actively learn from one another. In 2011, he co-founded King Kong Art Projects Unlimited, leading a multi-city international tracking survey that archived fifty years of conceptual progress across Southeast Asia. Today, he continues to exhibit globally, headlining major international art fairs and mounting site-specific interventions that routinely transform empty corporate ruins into vibrant cultural spaces.

Education & Formative Foundations
Fine Arts Degree: Graduated from the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts, majoring in Painting.

The Chabet Lineage: Formative conceptual training and lifelong ideological partnership under the guidance of Roberto Chabet.

Major Institutional Awards & Accolades
1981: Grand Winner (Painting Category) – Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) Annual Art Competition.

1980: Specially Cited Representative – Young Art in Asia Now International Survey, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong.
Exhibition & Curatorial History
Selected Solo Conceptual Expositions
2026: Selections from the Soler and Mona Santos Collection – West Gallery, Quezon City, Philippines

2019: Self-Portrait as Mirror / Mirror as Self-Portrait – Artinformal, Greenhills, Mandaluyong City

2017: Almost Doing Nothing – Finale Art File, Makati City, Philippines

2014: stick up don't move smile (reinventing black, 1957 to today) – Finale Art File, Makati City

2014: Nilo Ilarde: Faulty Landscape – Artinformal, Greenhills, Mandaluyong City

2004: Wounds and Absent Objects – mag:net Gallery, Paseo Center, Makati City

2001: White Cube – Small Gallery, Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), Pasay City

1998: More and More of Less and Less – West Gallery, Quezon City

1997: A ThingInItself – Lopez Museum, Pasig City

1993: The Black Painting Lesson – West Gallery, Quezon City

1991: Four Easy Pieces – Small Gallery, Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP)

1987: Artless, Hopeless, Helpless – Ayala Museum, Makati City (Breakthrough Professional Debut)

Selected Global Art Fairs & Transnational Surveys
2018: Featured Solo Interventions – Art Fair Philippines, The Link, Makati City

2015: Solo Conceptual Feature – Art Basel Hong Kong, Hong Kong

2015: Solo Spatial Presentation – Art Stage Singapore, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

2006: Specific Gravities 2 – Galleria Duemila, Pasay City, Philippines

1989: Sunsets and Other Vanishing Acts – Pinaglabanan Galleries, San Juan, Metro Manila

1985: Object / Non-Object – Small Gallery, Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP)

Major Curatorial Projects ("Exhibition Making")
2025: Here & Now & Now & Then – Staged at an abandoned, raw corporate office floor inside the RCBC Plaza Tower, Makati City. Ilarde broke down traditional gallery boundaries by turning an unfinished, concrete commercial floor into an active arena of industrial materiality, featuring works by Bernardo Pacquing, Poklong Anading, and Jan Balquin.

2011–2012: Chabet: 50 Years – Lead project curator for a monumental, multi-year retrospective campaign tracking half a century of Philippine conceptualism, mounted simultaneously across elite platforms in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Manila.

2005: Picturing Painting – The Jorge B. Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City.