Filipiniana exhibition article

Richie (Ramon Lerma), curator of the Ateneo Museum in the Philippines just sent me a text copy of the article he wrote in the "Philippine Star" regarding the "Filipiniana" exhibition I was in and went to Madrid for...

ArtSpeak
by Ramon E.S. Lerma

"Los Nuevos Indios Bravos"

What could be a more provocative way to commemorate The Year of the
Philippines in Spain than to see history repeat itself?

On Thursday, the 11th of May 2006, lofty ambition -- impossible to imagine
in the flurry of last-minute preparation - came to brilliant fruition. It
was the day when "Filipiniana," the biggest and most comprehensive
exhibition surveying the rich panoply of Philippine art and culture from
the late 19th century to the present, opened to a massive audience at the
Centro Cultural Conde Duque in Madrid -- a turnout that, as one Madrileña
put it, was impressive even by their own standards.

Juan Guardiola, the burly ex-chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary
Art, Barcelona (MACBA), who two years ago managed to raise the eyebrows
of not a few local museum directors, collectors and artists with his
"brassy" approach to organizing what seemed then to be a quixotic
endeavor by the Spanish cultural agency Casa Asia, looked understandably
pleased as he toured journalists from leading Spanish newspapers and
television networks through the show.

The exhibition space, roughly one and three quarters the size of our own
Met Museum's ground floor gallery, reminded me of a Romanesque church,
with over twenty alcoves opening on both sides of the nave. Exhibition
designer Angel Borrego took this architectural feature into consideration
when he developed the plans for the display, and imagined the hall as the
hull of a ship, where precious objects were kept in crates, awaiting safe
passage and unraveling. This, he said, was also in keeping with the idea
of "Filipiniana" as a way of classifying materials (books, photographs,
artifacts) pertaining to our country, which are stored in an archival
facility.

Honestly, I didn't feel very comfortable with the curatorial approach in
the beginning - particularly the idea of labeling the art and culture of
the Philippines like exotica in a curio cabinet. The feeling was akin
to imagining kinship with someone you had considered to be a close
relative; only to realize that this relative saw you as some sort of
oddity from a strange, far-away land.

I was imagining poor Madre España coming to terms with the reality of
virtual strangers from across the globe, who show up at her doorstep
claiming affinity and seeking acceptance. She receives them with
sincerity if not warmth, and her manner of expression is polite, if not
forthright. Yet she still seems awkward, struggling to, as Casa Asia
Director-General Ion de la Riva wrote in his foreword to the exhibition
catalogue, "advance the rapprochement."

This great effort to deal with, nay confront, an unavoidable truth is
perhaps the best way to read Guardiola's desire to undertake so much in
one exhibition. That being said, I cannot commend him enough for taking
on such a gargantuan task. In the collective memory, no one before him
had been able to bring together so many objects to encapsulate the
essential Filipino in a single display for the benefit of a foreign
audience. Casa Asia also deserves a rousing bravo for seeking to bridge
the gap between our two peoples.

The richness and complexity of this relationship is measured
progressively, and expounded upon on many levels in "Filipiniana."
Roughly, the show is divided into three sections, each one referring to a
particular "historical moment."

"The Colonial Imaginary" (1521-1945) showcases early maps of the islands,
botanical prints, vistas, rare Jose Honorato Lozano tipos del pais and
letras y figuras interestingly mingled in true postmodern fashion with
more contemporary works by Stephanie Syjuco and Manuel Ocampo, which
hearken to similar cartographic and imagined renditions of the
Philippines. Further tracing Spanish colonial society and its cultural
legacy are rooms holding antiquarian first editions, splendid paintings
by Juan Luna from the collections of the National Museum and the
Biblioteca-Museu Victor Balaguer (the GSIS Luna "Parisian Life," which is
also in the show, looks paltry in comparison) and, of special interest,
late 19th century photographs culled mostly from Spanish libraries and,
from a later period, the collection of John Silva and Jonathan Best.

I thought it food for thought and most appropriate in light of my earlier
misgivings to see Jean Laurent's photographs from the Madrid Exposition
of 1887 in this section -- a commercial and ethnographic exhibition that
brought together Philippine flora inside the Crystal Palace, which was
constructed specifically as a hothouse; products from the islands at the
Mining and Industry (now Velasquez) Palace; and various aspects of
Philippine culture, including actual villages reconstructed at the Retiro
Park, complete with natives shipped in from each of the colony's provinces
and put on display garbed in traditional costumes, or producing typical
crafts!

Further manifestations of occupation are manifested by materials on the
American and Japanese period. The former was played out in photographs
(those capturing battle scenes and casualties from the
Philippine-American War were revelations), books, magazine covers and
artworks from "peace time." Here, the landscape paintings of Juan
Arellano, framed as if seen through windows, from the Lopez Memorial
Museum collection, and the stunning "Interaction" by Victorio Edades,
Galo Ocampo and Botong Francisco from the Eleuterio Pascual collection
stood out. The latter was manifested by, among other materials,
propaganda posters from the holdings of the UP Vargas Museum.

The next section, "Nation (1946-1986)" traverses the post-World War II
period to the first EDSA People Power Revolution, and focuses on two
aspects. The first is the emergence of the independent Philippine
nation-state, and its search for identity as seen in cultural
manifestations marked by an attempt to localize the Western. Here viewers
can find works by the Neo-Realists with representative works by Arturo
Luz, Vicente Manansala, David Medalla, Jose Joya, Lee Aguinaldo, Victor
Oteyza, H.R. Ocampo, Alfonso Ossorio, J. Elizalde Navarro and Fernando
Zobel from the collection of the Ateneo Art Gallery as well as
interesting discoveries such as a series of Fernando Zobel photographs
from the Ayala Museum, and the iconic "Tawanan" by Anita Magsaysay-Ho on
loan from the Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation which I had never imagined would
be so miniscule! The second revolves around "Imeldifica" zeroing in on
the Iron Butterfly's extravagance as well as her cultural pursuits that
led to the establishment of institutions such as the CCP, whose forays
into high art are represented by conceptual work by Roberto Chabet. Such
excesses, coupled with the repression of civil liberties under the the
Conjugal Dictatorship became fodder for the rise of the Social Realist
Movement in art, which is evinced by the works of Antipas Delotavo,
Leonilo Doliricon, Renato Habulan, Pablo Baen Santos, and Edgar Talusan
Fernandez, whose canvas on wooden armature sculpture, "Kinupot" had the
honor of being selected as the featured artwork in the exhibition's
posters and banners.

The exhibition ends in fast-forward mode. "Memories of Overdevelopment
(1986-2006)" is set amidst the heady backdrop of globalization,
terrorism, economic growth, and diaspora as well as more local anxieties
in the social, political and religious sphere. The concerns mirrored by
the art unleash the plethora of contemporary complexity, from the
installation "Packing Up" by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan which consists
of purposefully layered personal belongings elegantly stacked with a
formalist eye for color and texture molded out of balikbayan boxes,
stirringly evoking past and future journeys, to the critical references
to a hybrid culture as shown in the late Santiago Bose's work, where
indigenous and foreign icons collide. Manuel Ocampo's furious exorcisms
and the now inactive Sanggawa's parody of popular culture vis-à-vis
Catholic religiosity are also quite emphatic. Sid Hildawa symbolically
links together the far end of the exhibition hall, and the thematic
diversity with an installation of photographs titled the "Choker
Project." Continuing the discourse, tucked away in the furthest corner,
Jose Legaspi's devilishly excoriating drawings are mounted floor to
ceiling. Juan Alcazaren coolly contextualizes the audience's vantage
point in this section with "The Sedimentation of the Mind is a Jumbled
Museum," while Dindo Llana ups the anti-establishment ante with his not
so subtle tin can label caricatures (Kudos to Guardiola for not
succumbing to self-censorship and to the Philippine Embassy in Madrid for
intelligently turning a blind eye on what could have easily raised a
diplomatic firestorm!)

At the opening after-party, which was held at an elegant restaurant beside
the hotel where the Philippine party was billeted, National Museum
director Cora Alvina took the floor to personally thank Guardiola and
Casa Asia for their supreme effort. She was followed by the National's
senior consultant John Silva, who eloquently recounted a similar scene
that took place over a century ago. That night, the expatriate ilustrados
hosted a dinner to honor Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo for
winning Gold and Silver Medals respectively, at the 1884 Madrid
Exposition of Fine Art. Held aloft as paragons of excellence, proof of
the skill and superiority of the Filipinos, it could rightfully be said,
Silva added, that art gave birth to a people's struggle for independence.

As cheers erupted and the group raised their glasses to toast the success
of "Filipiniana," I suspect that one niggling question remained on the
minds of los nuevos indios bravos: How far had we really gone since that
time?

------

"Filipiniana" runs at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid, Spain
through 24 September 2006