there is no excuse — no excuse — for a President who not only presumes that 85% of this country are the same kind of Catholic; he also then thinks that this is a valid enough reason to gauge public anger. no excuse for a President who is as bad as Vic de Leon Lima. let me not begin with the fact that his own father died for democracy and freedom, the same things that this President has sacrificed here. and you are wrong, Ser Noy, this is not a question of whether or not freedom is absolute; it’s a question of you folding to the CBCP and Pinoy conservatives, who in this country have proven themselves as bad as the kukluxklan. this is about you — and everybody else who sacrificed critical thinking in this case — revealing whose got the balls. and it is apparently all them priests and conservatives who could only zero in on those penises, because that’s all that was in that exhibit as far as they were concerned.
except that there were these works:
Alfredo Esquillo Jr.'s Mama Kinley IIRonald Ventura's UntitledJose Tence Ruiz's CSI Chimoy Si ImbisibolJose Tence Ruiz's CSI Chimoy Si ImbisibolCon Cabrera's Kompo
Andres Barrioquinto's Alam ng DiosRai Cruz's SalinlahiConstantino Zicarelli's VandalismIggy Rodriguez's PagbabantaJoseph de Luna Saguid's Kulo (excerpt)Mark Salvatus' Empire
let me skip the fact that this artwork is old, i.e., this is the nth version of it that’s been exhibited. let me not do a review of the whole exhibit Kulo here, as i hope to still be able to do that with more time in my hands.
in fact, this i feel is more urgent. elsewhere i praise pinky webb. since two days ago, i have completely changed my mind about her.
by this fact: upon a complaint, and many others who agreed on her show exklusibong, explosibong, expose‘s FB page, she does two stories on mideo cruz‘s art installation “Poleteismo” at the Cultural Center of the Philippines gallery. the follow up story is what i get to see, where pinky reveals herself as the worse kind of media personality there is, doing a story on a creative work and in the process proving that she actually thinks little — if at all — of art and creativity.
i don’t care how many people complain about an artwork, and i get the capitalist intent of the media believing that sensationalism is a service to the public. but it should be the media’s responsibility to see an artwork and not miss the fact that it is an artwork. i’m the last person who will insist that we cannot be offended by art — even i have limitations. but at the very least a piece of art should be seen in its totality, not at all what pinky did here.
Poleteismo by Mideo Cruz
instead her camera focused on the christ’s face attached to which was a wooden penis; the drawing that likened him to micky mouse; the condoms hanging/attached to certain religious images. when faced with mideo, her question of him was to the effect: anong pumasok sa isip mo at nagawa mo ‘to?
obviously pinky was coming from a place of agreement with those who have complained about “Poleteismo;” obviously this was pinky revealing herself as the conservative that she is, as a media personality who is limited by her notion(s) of art, or lack of it; obviously pinky is a perfect example of objectivity proving itself only a stance that panders to the Pinoy church, noisy and controversial and powerful as it is.
because at the very least, pinky should’ve featured that work as a whole, that is a whole goddamn room, and not zero in on its parts as if that was the whole work. when i saw “Poleteismo” i did not quickly or easily associate it with religiosity, as i did with icons and institutions, belief systems and ideologies: imelda and ferdie, mickey mouse, robert jaworski, showbiz personalities, the university of the philippines, activism, slogans, chants, sex, and yes, Catholicism. the latter is not only one of many things here, it is crucial to see it as such because it’s the only way to experience the space (again, this was practically a whole room) and let its bombardment of images do what it must: startle you, disgust you, at the very least force you to see that this was not just about religiosity as it was about idolatry.
Poleteismo 2011Poleteismo 2011
after which we might argue about what exactly this work questions, what it puts side by side with catholicism, what it says about the state of the nation since 2007 when a version of it was first installed. then let’s talk about whether we should take offense at all, given our catholicism, or whether or not this is the kind of catholicism that’s embroiled in all the other things we hold dear sinful and evil as they might be considered.
pinky herself performed the travesty and tragedy that this work critiques, and she has no idea. i’d be sad about it, were i not dismayed that she didn’t know better.
to have even walked through that space and spoken to the artist, all captured on the XXX camera, and then to have asked those questions, is a measure of pinky and no one else. my undergraduate students would’ve asked infinitely better questions of mideo and of CCP Visual Arts director karen ocampo-flores, who has said as much about the manner in which “Poleteismo” has been treated in parts versus in its entirety.
Poleteismo 2011
of course the latter is expected of the Pinoy Church, petty as they are, lost as they are in the changing — almost static — contemporary times. but to have the media, and popular media at that! failing to be critical precisely of the premises of this complaint against “Poleteismo,” failing to see the work and thinking ah, that complaint could be wrong, is just unforgivable. you know what else is a measure of bad journalism here? in the course of that segment, i did not hear pinky mention the title of the mideo’s work (though i might have missed it as i was getting more and more incensed by the minute). she also kept calling the work an “exhibit” — which it isn’t. she wouldn’t have had the right to talk about the exhibit as a whole either, i.e. Kulo itself, because she didn’t even mention the rest of those works. which is just irresponsible too, to have failed not just in seeing the entirety of “Poleteismo,” but also in placing it in the context of the bigger exhibit.
what pinky did was the height of sensationalist reportage, with the arts as sacrificial lamb, bringing on discussions on morality and money, the bane of the culture industry in this country. that segment on “Poleteismo” ends with pinky saying something to the effect that creative freedom must not impinge upon religious beliefs. oh but what to do with someone who did not even get into the creativity of something? what of someone who will fight for freedom of expression in the media, but will absolutely fail to get art productions? good lord (yes using his name in vain, so sue me).
of course i can hear the bottom line here: for pinky it’s that someone actually complained about that artwork and was offended, well let me throw this into the picture:
i am offended by this project of Sen. TG Guingona because it is an unnecessary use of taxpayers money, since the people he talked to for Design Para sa Lahat are rich people to begin with who do not need any financial support in doing what they already do and have the infrastructure for! i am disgusted and offended and angered by this, and i am complaining! and i want to put in the word konyo for more sensationalism.
sige nga, sinong makakagawa ng feature tungkol diyan?
It might be out of the way, and painfully in the middle of the corporate hustle and bustle of Makati, but Rizalizing the Future was a good enough reason to leave anti-corporatism in the car and step into the Yuchengco Museum.
The hook, and one of the more powerful things in this exhibit, is the inclusion of Team Manila’s contemporary renderings on wood of Jose Rizal in shades (and later on their other Pepe products), in colors too vivid you forget he’s national hero. In “Rizal in Shades” one can only thank the heavens for Team Manila’s reconfiguration of history into interesting and viable images that comes from a stable and consistent sense of popular nationalism. Let me forget, of course, that I have yet to be able to afford one of their products.
Truth to tell, in the context of the museum, this was a feat in itself; in the context of the exhibit it would be the portent of the diversity that’s here, only united by notions of Rizal. Contradictions are welcome! Hear! Hear! Your telling of this story is as good as mine!
As it turns out, this works infinitely well with the Rizal heirs’ exhibition of things / correspondence / lives equated with our national hero. At first glance the collection seems too trivial for comfort, but in reality, it is more inspiring than we’d like to admit. Art as inspiration to do better in our lives seems cliché, never mind that it has as market the younger students among us, yet there is an amount of greatness in Rizal that’s difficult to ignore, or not be inspired by, the jaded among us notwithstanding.
At the very least, you must get goose bumps looking at the pencil sketches of portraits Rizal did himself.
Over Rizal, Monuments to a Hero had all the makings of superficiality. After all, in light of Jose Rizal’s sesquicentennial his monuments seem like the most flimsy of subjects; in light of the more important question of his continued relevance, this exhibit risked the possibility of being absolutely irrelevant.
But there was more here than just photos of Rizal statues, and while the curatorial note speaks of memory and remembering, the sheer number of these monuments across the country surprisingly reminds of a predisposition to forget, where archetypes end up meaning nothing, and portrayals of heroes are but one-dimensional representations.
What Over Rizal reveals is that at some point archetypes can turn out to be real and one-dimensionality can become a foregone conclusion. These photos taken together might in fact give the more discerning spectator a sense of the kind of narrative we collectively build as a nation about Rizal, even and precisely on the level of the seemingly harmless monument.
Alwin Reamillo’s Ang Balut Viand exhibit is like balut: it looks like a standard generic egg from the outside, but is an unborn duck on the inside. Which is of course to say that you might not have the stomach for that sisiw literally and figuratively; or find that you actually quite have a taste for it, from sipping that hot balut liquid straight from the shell, to the process of slowly peeling the shell, and downing it whole: the eating of balut isn’t just about eating, as it is of knowing, of identity.
The balut is one claim to fame we’re uncertain about, seeing as it is equated with hissing cockroaches on Fear Factor. Talk about bringing us back to the dark ages of being the exotic and barbaric brown siblings of America.
In Reamillo’s hands though the balut becomes reason for pride, as it is reclaimed in its process of being changed: there are no duck fetuses here, but there is plenty of balut made out of plaster and emulsion.
