In the classroom, the kids sit all day and endure extreme boredom. At the Holiday School of Art*, they are always on vacation. In the classroom, the kids are stuck and the lessons suck. At the HSA, kids are drinking and smoking and ‘doing’ art.

Those who can’t do math and science make art. Art students are notorious at academic sand allergic to reading. Art school is a breeding ground for experimental (i.e. bad) musicians. Teach your children art and they will never have enough money for drugs. In society, artists are not taken as seriously as doctors, lawyers, and business owners. Most of them are perpetual teenagers.

The Department of Unemployment?
Oh, that’s headed by someone named Art Majors.

Welcome to the Holiday School of Art Presents: Urban Decay Planning, an installation by John Jayvee del Rosario. In this imaginary classroom, the imaginary students present art projects about the things they see around them that affect them. What they see is the absence of morals and a government ruled by goons.

Through these cartolina drawings, juvenile paintings, cardboard sculptures, humorous embroideries, and poetic assemblages, the ‘kids’ reflect on the government’s rotten plans and systematic deception, shining a light on the darkness in our society. This is their way of fighting the insanity of everyday situations and laughing at the horror of politics.

John Jayvee del Rosario’s works urge us to renegotiate art-making as a reactive or, at times, autistic process, communicating the depravity of commercial aesthetics and capturing child-like (i.e. innocent) views of the world. By experimenting with aleatoric methods, he creates with everyday, recognizable objects a situation in which the viewers are confronted with the conditioning of their adult mind and are nudged to wake up from their spiritual slumber. While the vanguards sleep, he stages a protest outside the gates of Art.

The artist’s mother is the ‘curator’ of the show, or rather, the ‘moderator’ of this ‘school show.’ She designed the room, set up the artworks, and even made the lettering. In real life, she is a high school principal. She was del Rosario’s Art Teacher when he was in grade school.

John Jayvee del Rosario is the only son of school teacher Vivian Zafra and jeepney operator Jovito del Rosario (deceased). John Jayvee was born in Quezon City on February 2, 1971. In his early school days at Don Bosco, Mandaluyong, he showed abilities in drawing, singing, playing, writing, and acting. In 1991, he graduated from the University of Santo Tomas with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature and currently works as an office clerk at the same University.

He is the singer, songwriter, and drummer for indie art-punk band Sleepyheads, where he often combines performance art, poetry, and DIY props in live shows. In the past, he has collaborated with artists Poklong Anading for Walang Kikilos and Lani Maestro for Sing Mother (the Abandon drawings), as well as with the Spanish band Pablo Und Destruktion in the first Posporos Filipino-Spanish concert tour. In 2017, he was awarded an art residency at Koganecho Bazaar in Yokohama, Japan where he did a musical performance piece called ReVoltezz-V in Jappon. This is his first solo visual art show.

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