“We used to come here when there was nothing,” remembers Rachel Rillo, co-director of Silverlens Gallery. She and her partner, Isa Lorenzo, the gallery’s founder, would take a speedboat from Davao City to Kopiat Island, on the Davao Gulf, and sleep under mosquito nets in the single wooden bungalow that stood there. When the Lorenzo family announced plans to develop the island into a resort, their initial reaction wasn’t excitement. “We thought we’d lost our hideaway.” Instead, they helped redefine it.
This June, Silverlens Gallery launched the Lubi Art Project, nine contemporary art pieces scattered throughout the Dusit Thani Lubi Plantation Island Resort. Eight years in the making, the project transforms this private island in Davao de Oro into a cultural habitat, where art coexists with luxury villas, rich marine life, and the local community that lives and works on the island. For the launch weekend, participating artists were present, gathered not only to unveil their works but to celebrate the island’s evolution into a new kind of sanctuary, one that folds contemporary art into its vision of mindful living and ecological renewal.
