the hardway

(THW) is a graffiti collective founded by BLAME in 2023. They have since mounted group exhibitions such as Visual Pollution at NINUNO Gallery (2024) and Hardway at Talyer 15 (2025), alongside merch pop-ups at KalawakanSpacetime, QCB x GOD (Good Old Days), and COLDPAINTS:HARDLOVE at Mess-Age Taipei Studio.

THE HARDWAY is a natural result of Metro Manila’s entropy. Pressure, congestion, decay converge into violent clouds as acid rains down on the subservient, bearing centuries-old crosses and remnants of a culture erased, rewritten.

The way calls to few: Riders create new paths from concrete and steel. Shutterbugs and filmmakers capture forms of the now. Orators and griots echo pain into anthems. Daubers slaughter flesh onto surface and cloth.

Above all, scribes; archivists, mark-makers; familiar to the ciphers, committed to the code.

THE HARDWAY falls anomalous to the path of least resistance; the deliberate act.

Zanor - THW