http://www.LivingInthePhilippines.comis theORIGINAL, firstPhilippines Expat site on the Net, since 1989. This is not one of many knock-offs, copycats, imitations. Some have permutations of the names,misspellings and "in" and "the" or "ing." left off to deceive you. This is the original, by: Don A. Herrington
Nothing is more typically,
touchingly, Filipino than a story I once heard from
office secretaries in Makati City's financial
district.
A company VP hung a painting of a Madonna and Child
in a reception area. In the ensuing days, a
secretary set a small table in front of it; another
a vase of flowers on it; still another a votive
candle. Before long, that part of the room became an
altar. During lunch break one day someone knelt to
say the rosary. She was joined by two, three others.
More on other floors heard about this prayer
practice, and joined in. Now that corner of the
reception area is a venue for noon worship.
With each retelling, you hear the same reaction from
listeners, "Ah, that's so Pinoy" (local parlance for
what's peculiarly Filipino). For a common feature of
Philippine cultural life is its faith in
supernatural or preternatural forces. Sacred caves
and groves in pre-Hispanic times bore witness to
this faith in the transcendental, the magical. The
advent of Christianity through the Spanish
colonization of the islands in the 16th century,
particularly in the rural areas, only enriched it,
giving rise to a belief system which mingles
primordial animism (anito) with Roman Catholicism.
Christ's Passion, His agony, death on the cross and
resurrection, and the post-Scriptural stories of
saints and miracles, appealed to the native
imagination. And Catholicism's liturgy and rituals,
from the Mass, its chants, musk of incense and
burning candle wax to ringing bells, liturgical
vestments, and the colors and lights of processions
around the town during feast days, proved
irresistible to the sensuous Pinoy and his love of
theatrical spectacle - as if nothing in the realm of
the spirit energizes as much belief as objects he
can relate to by sight and touch: statuary (santo),
rosary beads, estampitas (holy pictures), medallions
- and anting-anting, the amulets of folk religion
and native sorcery. And such amulets were worn by
Filipino soldiers who believed them to be magical
instruments of invincibility - and invisibility -
before enemy firepower in the Revolution against
Spain in the mid-1890s and, later, the protracted
war against the United States till the early years
of the 20th century. And that sun within the
triangle of the national flag, for instance, derives
from the Trinitarian symbol which has been adopted by makers of anting-anting.
Bear in mind: the ancient Tagalog word for Supreme
Being, Bathala, is the root of the common
interjection, "bahala na!" Uttered whenever one is
forced to confront overwhelming odds, it isn't
simply an expression of fatalistic resignation but
often enough a spur to action which pins its hopes
on strength from a supernatural force. Small wonder
an artists' group this year organized a Lenten
exhibition entitled, by way of wordplay, "Bathala
Na!" And that bore the signs and symbols of folk
religiosity.
The clergy's emphasis on the need to endure
suffering here and now, in exchange for greater
glory in the hereafter, is a dominant element in the
visual arts in this predominantly Catholic country,
which explains the popular observance of
penitential/Lenten aspects of Christianity a key to
personal salvation. In fact, Christian spirituality
is a defining influence on national life - and the
fine arts as well - which sets the Philippines apart
from the rest of Asia.
Where else in the world do you find a venue, chapel
or altar of the Virgin Mary in banks, shopping
malls, hotels? You find such commingling of
religious worship and money from the Central Bank of
the Philippines to Metro Manila's commercial
establishments where walkway space is allocated for
Mass, novenas and rosaries which draw SRO-only
crowds on certain days: the Glorietta, the country's
swankiest commercial complex; SM Megamall, Asia's
biggest; Duty Free Philippines near the Ninoy Aquino
International Airport, to name some.
Where else in Asia do you notice people making a
quick, small sign of the Cross - a car driver before
driving out, a basketball player coming fresh off
the bench, a passenger before boarding and alighting
a bus - except in the Philippines where religion has
rooted itself so deeply in the collective Pinoy
psyche? And what overseas Filipina domestic helper
hasn't packed in her suitcase a statuette of the
Virgin Mary or Santo Ni–o or some other holy icon?
So many are the saints to pray to for succor -
including some lately stricken off by the Vatican
from the list of the canonized as more fictional
than real (St. Filomena, St. Christopher) who
continue to hold on to their niches in the eyes of
the common people. So many, too, are those
relatively obscure patron saints like St. Roch, St.
Jude, St. Isidore, St. Eustace - because of their
special appeal to the sick, needy and desperate
masses struggling to survive in a Third World
agro-economy.
What visual artist of stature, from Antonio Malantic,
the brothers Asuncion, Resurreccion Hidalgo and
Simon Flores of the 19th century to Hernando Ocampo,
Galo Ocampo, Romeo Tabuena, Vicente Manansala,
Napoleon Abueva and Ang Kiukok in the 20th, has not
painted or sculpted the Madonna and Child, the
Crucified Christ or the Santo Ni–o (the Infant Jesus
suited in gala splendor), three of the most popular
icons of Philippine art?
Overall, masters of the past follow the orthodoxy of
the pious for whom icons are essential aids to
prayer. Such is no longer the case with succeeding
generations for whom Christian iconography extends
beyond the needs of church and home worship:
changing times require its reinvention to deal with
contemporary social issues, such as justice and
freedom of speech. During the martial-law rule of
Ferdinand Marcos (1972-86), for instance,
pro-democracy activists gave traditional imagery a
new spin by relating them to human-rights causes and
invoking divine tender mercies against
neo-imperialist/neo-colonial power and the might of
the military. Exemplifying this was the role played
by the image of Mary Mother of God, hoisted onto the
shoulders of the people in the nonviolent EDSA
Revolution which toppled the Marcos dictatorship.
Before that, the Social Realists had begun to
politicize the visual arts with religion serving as
a motivating spirit. Pablo Baens Santos depicted
Inang Bayan (Motherland) as a female Christ in a
masterly painting, Krista, her mouth gagged with
barbed wire but her fist clenched in defiance.
Antipas Delotavo identified the Blessed Virgin with
the masses living in squalor in a distinguished
portrait series commissioned as part of the 2000th
anniversary celebration of her birth.
But those who came after the Social Realists are a
less politicized lot. More worldly and laid back in
their attitude toward faith in the supernatural,
they do not confine themselves to conventional
Christian imagery but also include the folk-belief
system of the rural and urban poor grappling with
subhuman housing, malnutrition, disease, boredom,
vice and violence. Hardly touched by the benefits of
a free-market economy in the dot.com age, the poor
have little recourse, besides political activism,
other than prayer, magic, faith healing and taking
their chances with luck (sweepstakes, lotto, jueteng).
Hard times explain the upsurge of populist
charismatic movements like El Shaddai, which draws
legions of followers to their prayer rallies at
Luneta Park.
Easy enough to see: where the basket cases are,
there faith goes also as a way of coping and
surviving.
So pervasive is the faith/prayer/hope theme in
Philippine art that it's not surprising that
Valentine Willie Fine Art has organized a Philippine
theme exhibition built around it. In postmodern
Metro Manila and elsewhere in the archipelago, young
visual artists aged 40 and under are finding several
uses for folk belief that radically departs from the
conventional Christian parameters references of
early modernists. One of these is its deployment as
a means of establishing cultural identity.
Among the younger artists, the religious theme
reflects a diversity of concerns from the social to
the transcendental as well as a diversity of
responses from the documentary to the critical, from
the skeptical and whimsical to the surreal and
purely aesthetic. Also, they tend to resort to
oblique rather than direct expressive devices;
synecdoche (where a part represents the whole)
rather than a depiction of the whole image (as in
works by Santiago Bose, Alfredo Esquillo, Mark
Justiniani).
For ex-seminarian Norberto Roldan, a leading light
of the Social Realist movement in Negros Island
known as the Black Artists of Asia, the response
takes on a documentary attitude. In his Faith and
Sorcery series of wall assemblages, he juxtaposes
crucifixes, medals and estampitas with bottles of
native herbal remedies and anting-anting: a
compendium of panaceas to the oppressed masses.
Interesting is what he does in the works chosen for
Kuala Lumpur: by taking into account similarities
and differences of color and tone in the multiple
items he arranges in grid formation - such as a
downpour of crucifixes or a miscellany of holy
pictures and medicine bottles - there emerges a
large cruciform at the center of each assemblage.
Worth noting here, as in the works of some others,
is the use of repeat-forms like visual mantras. The
meticulous care with which Roldan brings a subtle
symmetry to these forms connotes that his art is no
indictment of superstition and ignorance but one of
empathy with the hopes of the rural masses.
Not so Gerry Tan's installation of open crates
filled with Catholic icons. "Get all this pious junk
outta here!" appears to be the cynical message of
his assembly of cheap, mass-produced, devotional
stuff, ready to be stowed away like so much landfill
for empty graves.
As for some others included in the Faith exhibition,
none are about to throw away just yet the tokens of
folk spiritualism, certainly not those anting-anting.
There's a whole slew of them for all occasions to
choose from. One such is referred to in a mysterious
piece with erotic overtones by Bose, gayuma or love
charm, believed to empower a man to win the
affection of a woman he desires.
For Jose Legaspi, institutional religion is a bad
trip, bringing memories as utterly bleak as his
drawings. These black-and-gray monochromes vent bile
at a repressive Church and its members with closed
minds concerning homosexuality and the institution
of marriage. Autobiographical alienation and angst
by this gay artist, maligned by family and
associates for his gender preference, nonetheless
does the religious sensibility a service by showing
us how neo-Gothic demons should be depicted in art -
with ferocious clarity, precision and immediacy.
Taking liberties with traditional representations of
heaven and salvation, as much as with God and His
angels, is apparent in the wryly whimsical works of
Justiniani. In Stairway to Heaven, the evangelical
missionary with a crooked stone stairway beside him
is treated with tongue-in-cheek relish. And in the
solo figure in the painting he incongruously titles
Christ/Icarus, he downsizes Christ's redemptive
mission to the hubris of Icarus of Western
mythology; but take away the title and what emerges
is a character outfitted with wings, more like a
falling alien thanthe Man-God nailed to a cross that
isn't there at all.
More than half the works on display are about angels
or allude to them, and why not? Attractively
luminous spirits with winged bodies, they serve as a
link between God and man, heaven and earth - not to
mention what has become the drinking man's patron
saint hereabouts, the archangel San Miguel seen
slaying the dragon Satan on the label of every
bottle of a popular brand of gin.
These celestial beings are part of every Pinoy's
childhood memories of catechism. Joy Mallari's
angels as church sentinels are a dreamy if forlorn
homage to them. But angels also serve as metaphors
in statements on contemporary social and
metaphysical issues. One such is the lone figure
falling headfirst in Esquillo's Angelito (the name
means little angel), with a wing ripped from his
back; it evokes the loss of innocence among the
youth in a secular world.
Another is Armando Bacaltos Angels Ascending, which
look more like angels abandoning the world, with
only their legs showing, their heads and torsos
cropped out by the painting's upper edge. In a class
by themselves are Ofelia Gelvezon-Tequi's visions of
the combat between good and evil in her Pinball
Machine print series, incorporating angels and
demons of her own invention with allusions to
space-age astronauts and missiles, drawn with
childlike simplicity in a neo-primitive style. In
contrast, and evincing a purely aesthetic
preoccupation, is Juan Tence Ruiz's jagged
improvisations on Roger van der Weyden's Renaissance
angels.
No Philippine religious exhibition of course is
complete without a resurrected Christ as integral to
the Lenten season. And the Vatican's recent addition
of the Resurrection to the traditional Fourteen
Stations of the Cross suits the Pinoy spiritual
sensibility just fine and love of glorious endings.
As depicted in Daniel Coquilla's Fifteenth Station,
it's the only one in color among the 14 other
Stations, which are in stark black and white. As in
the 14 others, the Fifteenth displays that peculiar
Coquilla aerial perspective and quirky humor of
having his wall-eyed people, in this case the
followers of Jesus, looking straight up at their
resurrected Savior, Who in turn is floating straight
toward us, the viewers.
Most characteristically Pinoy of all perhaps is Neil
Manalo's Influence as just what the doctor ordered:
celebratory in a representational style oozing with
exuberance, homely charm and na•ve optimism replete
with festive balloons. Significantly, all the
figures in Manalo's microcosmos, both angelic and
demonic, are looking at a television set, as if that
is all it takes to escape from the perils and
contradictions of the human condition.
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