Manila, Philippines – The one-man exhibit by Nestor Perez Ong, leader of the Steampunk Indio Collective, turns one of the exhibit halls of Gateway Gallery into a brass-bound archive of dreams. Each piece in “The Philosophical Tales Of The Ancient Raconteur” began in Nestor’s sleep, in fragments of memory and myth that refuse to stay buried.
He then rebuilds those visions through the steampunk lens: Clockwork maidens harvest fields of copper. Gas-masked Malakas and Maganda are awakened by an automaton raven coming out of a copper bamboo stem. Baroque churches sprout smokestacks and rivets. The result is not nostalgia, but a collision: precolonial spirit, colonial trauma, and industrial futurism all welded onto the same canvas.
Each of Nestor’s surrealistic works is a raconteur’s tale. Its narrative meanders, exaggerates, and reveals. Imagine a grandfather telling a story to his grandchildren with the bamboo hut fitted with Tesla coils. In Nestor’s universe, Bathala wears a gas mask. Noli Me Tangere is revised to fit in a world populated by sentient mice with characters like Crisostomo Ibarrat and Maria Clarat.
By filtering folklore through steam and steel, Nestor asks what our ancestors would have built if the empire had not interrupted their craft. The aesthetic is not totally borrowed from Victorian London. It is indigenized, anchored in bamboo, abaca, and the heat of a tropical forge. His machines leak, hiss, and sweat like living things.
As the leader of the Steampunk Indio Collective, Nestor positions the exhibit as both art and manifesto. These are philosophical tales because every panel poses a question about agency, memory, and invention.
What if our revolutions had airships? What if our epics ran on steam? The Ancient Raconteur does not give answers. He offers blueprints disguised as dreams, inviting the viewer to keep building. In Nestor’s hands, steampunk stops being a costume and becomes a critique; a way to retell the stories of a nation while reimagining her tools.
The Philosophical Tales Of The Ancient Raconteur will run from May 16 – 22, 2026, at the Gateway Gallery’s Small Room. Artist Reception will be held on May 16, at 3 p.m.
