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.
Opening day guest Marta Lovina and Kristian Henson flank Carlos' self-portrait. Photo: Boy Cabrido
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.
Manila in Carlos' eye. Photo: Boy Cabrido
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.”
A collection of photographs depicting Manila's landmarks in the 70s-80s with captions by Carlos. Photo: Boy Cabrido.
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.