30/07/2025
The same day last year, 97 students from three different sections were gathered in one room. Before that moment, everyone already knew what was about to happen. All for the same project, all with the same purpose their seniors had upheld for the past decade as graduating Multimedia Arts students. For the past three years, the one year in a fully online set-up, these students lived in their own separate worlds, sharing only glances in the third-floor hallways of the COECSA building and cafeterias or crossing paths in elective classes.
No one could’ve predicted their future collaboration would create something impactful… something magical.
As the batch that would create a Multimedia Arts exhibit for the 11th year, one that would mark a new decade, the expectations were high, and the weight of the legacy built for the past decade was even higher. Just three years ago, before that moment, they would visit the art exhibits their seniors had built, wide-eyed and inspired. But realization would creep in—they, too, would be in those very shoes one day. They can’t help but think:
"How can we inspire a new tradition, while honoring what came before?"
Escaped from Mother's clutches, the plumes found freedom. The Red Mansion housed these talented and hardworking artists for years, and as they take their first step in a new beginning, the doors that were opened will now be closing—not to shut them out, but to set them free, to let them wander into the unsure.
But this isn’t the end.
The Red Mansion will always welcome you back, no matter how far and high you have soared.
If walls could talk, they’d hum softly of roots that never left—of how, no matter how far we roam, Aether will always have room for who we’re still becoming.
New beginnings were made as the 11th year of the Multimedia Arts Exhibit set a new system of exhibitions—one that is not only built to serve its guests, but to also recognize the hands that collectively built Aether.
And as this chapter closes, we do so with all our hearts.
MAISON: Tale of the Red Mansion, will now be signing off.
Thank you everyone for your continued support throughout the months, and we hope to see you again for another adventure that the next exhibitors will be curating for everyone to experience.
It was a difficult, yet valuable path that the 97 of us managed to build and share with all of you. We hope the message of the exhibit resonated with you, as it did with us, too, when we were building it.
Publication by: Louis Manata
Caption by:
Dominic Hernandez, Richelle Camalig, Ychelle Cajigas, Hannah Gloria
