This online gallery is showing UP Diliman's tranquil beauty amid quarantine for a cause

Few have been able to witness the tranquil beauty of University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman since the country fell into the grips of COVID-19.

Luckily, anyone can witness the campus' "Uneasy Peace" through an online photo gallery by art history professor Eloisa May P. Hernandez this December.

"Uneasy Peace navigates the tension occasioned by the enduring silence and emptiness of familiar spaces—streets, school buildings, sites of public art—where people, prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, once gathered as a matter of course and long to gather in again," Hernandez says in her online invitation.

Consisting of 40 photographs of the UP campus, the gallery may be accessed via the vMeme website from December 12 to January 24.

Photographs featured on the exhibit will also be on 2021 calendars, postcards and other merchandise.

Proceeds will be donated to Art Mobile Relief Kitchen, a volunteer group of artists and cultural workers that endeavor to feed the hungry in times of distress.

Here's a peek of the gallery:

"Uneasy Peace" also marks Hernandez's return to exhibition after several years of working in the UP Diliman campus as a professor at the Department of Art Studies and College of Arts and Letters

After a long time of posting photographs dedicated to the campus via Instagram, she finally decided to organize an online exhibit as galleries all over the country remain closed due to COVID-19.

"I hope to show people what the campus looked like during the lockdown, especially UP students, fellow professors and UP alumni who miss the campus," Hernandez told GMA News Online.

"Moreover, I handled 3 freshie Arts 1 classes last semester and since classes were held remotely, they were not able to experience being in the campus like thousands of UP freshies who came before them," she added.

She hopes for her photographs to introduce the campus to anybody, anywhere who wishes to see it, may it be from the safety and comfort of their own homes.

“I know that there is no substitute for the ‘actual' but I bring UP Diliman campus to you hoping that these photographs spark deepened yearning and nostalgia, become a source of serenity and solace, resurface and reclaim feelings of being human again during this pandemic,” she added.

"Uneasy Peace" may be accessed via the vMeme website from December 12 to January 24. —JCB, GMA News