Millennial artists explore emerging trend of liminal art at Cebu art fest

CEBU — In the midst of the visual noise of about 300 artists at the recently concluded Tops ArtFest in Cebu which ran for four straight days, four artists caught my attention. It turns out, they were all millennials. 

The millennial generation are those born between 1981 to 1996.  They are those who have integrated the digital life, adopted a digital sense of social activism, and have been known for their institutional critique. It is a generation who grew up during a period of massive technological acceleration, global recessions, and shifting socio-political climates.  

Deeply political, the creators frequently champion environmental sustainability, equity, diversity, and mental health awareness that lead to producing immersive experiences, interactive installations, and highly conceptual new media art. 

At the Tops ArtFest, Kris Jan Gavino (b. 1986), Charmaine Cristobal (b. 1990), Joel Chavez (b. 1991), and Bullet Dematera (b. 1981) stood out for their works that depict internal musings using archetypal symbols in compositions that are quiet and still, a sense of time frozen that reflects the psychological state of a society suspended between an old reality and an unknown future. 

Rendered in clean works on canvas using oil, acrylic or graphite, the works stand apart from the rest not just for their technical skills but compositions that draw the viewer into their internal world. Although the selected works are not all liminal — they all exhibit a common sense of quiet introspection — a turning within in response to a chaotic world.

When a large-scale crisis disrupts the normal flow of everyday life, our collective sense of stability collapses. There is a new art that addresses these uncertain times — called liminal art, mainly found in Gavino’s works which expresses the ultimate visual metaphor for that exact feeling — a psychological process of integrating the conscious mind with the subconscious, a necessary period where the conscious mind collapses, forcing the individual to descend into the deep, dark waters of the unconscious.  

Liminal art (from the Latin word limen, meaning “threshold”), a reaction to today’s chaotic fast-paced, uncertainties and sensory overload, is famous for evoking a complex blend of contrasting feelings — simultaneously causing unease, isolation, and loneliness, while offering a sense of nostalgia, comfort, and peaceful quiet contemplation.

The millennials have absorbed the ‘90s nostalgia of Saturday morning cartoons and early internet culture that reflect on systemic economic hardships and hyper-connectivity resulting in themes of power imbalances, isolation, and internal musings. 

Historically, an internal visual style crops up during periods of immense structural collapse, collective grief, and economic alienation. In the 1910s, the Metaphysical Art movement came at the heels of World War I when Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1911–1915) made a mark with his claustrophobic, fractured interiors. 

Following the devastation of WWI (1920s–1940s) when society was still reeling from the massive collective trauma that quickly led to the Great Depression and World War II, René Magritte and the Surrealist movement reflected existential isolation who  painted everyday rooms with wrong proportions or doors opening into endless voids. 

Generally, liminal art are works that heavily feature structures built for passage or waiting, such as endless corridors, empty stairwells, and spaces that depict a void or the abyss. Mostly depicting compositions that are empty of people in settings that are normally crowded, these works  are often dreamlike.  It is an offshoot of surrealism that has entered a new phase. Instead of exploring a collective cultural subconscious, artists worldwide are constructing deeply private inner worlds. 

Compared to traditional Surrealism that fractures reality by combining things that don’t belong together (like Salvador Dalí’s melting clocks or René Magritte’s train emerging from a fireplace), liminal art operates in reverse. It keeps the structural rules of reality perfectly intact. 

Surrealism feels like an active dream or a subconscious nightmare overflowing with symbolism. Liminal spaces feel like the waiting room between those dreams — a static, frozen limbo where time has lost its meaning attempting to capture the transitional, “in-between” psychological states that feel suspended, strangely empty, and slightly unsettling. It explores the concept of being on the border of two realities rather than arriving at a final destination.

Millennials spearhead this global cultural shift toward openly discussing mental health, trauma, and emotional well-being. Art becomes a visual therapy. Instead of painting grand political figures or traditional landscapes, creators in this generation paint psychological landscapes. Exploring vulnerability, grief, and inner peace on canvas that normalize introspective journeys.

The ‘60s and ‘70s counterculture generation who responded to the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the rigid corporate/military compliance also looked inward to expand their consciousness towards the cosmos and wanted an explosion of collective energy, community, and sensory overload.

Both movements were born out of a profound “turn inward” when there is a helpless lack of control to a chaotic, overwhelming external world.

There is a global explosion of liminal art that reflects a widespread societal feeling of being caught between eras. Sociologists and art critics suggest that navigating rapid technological jumps, economic shifts, and global disruptions has left communities feeling unanchored. 

Liminal art provides a visual landscape for that exact psychological state: an entire generation standing on a threshold, looking out into an unfamiliar, quiet, and unwritten horizon.