DEC13_SUPERDUPERFINAL

Despite differences in styles and techniques due to their individual
histories, the artists threw into relief, particularly in the KATALISTA
exhibit, the Philippines and South Korea’s “shared experiences of the
Cold War, colonial rule, and rapid social change “as well as a glimpse
of how the Philippine’s People Power Revolution has impacted on
the rest of Asia.
Nevertheless, whether local or foreign, 2014 foregrounded many
front liners in contemporary arts’ progressive shift to art that
transcends borders. Epitomizing this were Russ Ligtas’ opening
night live theatrical performance (with corresponding digital
version) at the Orange Gallery of Madam Binayaan regarding the
travails of unrequited homosexual love in a homophobic society
that combined opera, kabuki, and mime a la Marcel Marceau as
well as Korean artist Black Jaguar’s Bath at Noon, a video recording
of a presentation at the Museo Negrense de la Salle that combined
photography, painting, and artist’s performance in front of the
old Jeollanamdo Provincial Office in Gwangju, where she ritually
washed her body upon which a target pattern was drawn to evoke a
Ssitgimgut, a shamanistic ritual for “washing away the grudges and
bitter feelings of the dead” for the anonymous victims of” bloody
gun fights between civilian militias and the army who were killed
“near that historic spot.
Meanwhile in the wake of the recent earthquake in Bohol and supertyphoon
Yolanda in Leyte, the 2014 VIVA ExCon presented an
exhibit at Orange Gallery curated by art historian and critic Patrick
Flores entitled LIFEFORCE, that showcased the destructive as well
as the healing quality of art.
Focusing on reflections on “the vitality and the vulnerability of
the socialworld, shaped by a range of efforts and structures and
opportunities from people to state power to culture, collectives
and solidarities,” the exhibition showed how varied forms of art
produce “forms of life.” They were represented among others by
Alma Lacorte’s lyrically idyllic and perpetually-renewing paper
forest Ig-uli in the face of attempts to refuse or disrupt these forms
through the violence of nature (eerily evoked by P.G. Zuloaga’s
Dalimu-os (Tempest) and the inhumanity of man (viscerally shown
by Iggy Rodriguez’s Into the Realm of Anxieties). On the other
hand, because the artist, according to the show’s curatorial notes
“inevitably reflects on these life forms that are offered up to the
public in exhibitions,” they may be interpreted as “biographies” or
“narratives of becoming and prevailing, of failure and exhaustion.”
Thus, using a gamut of materials from papier mache (Jana Jumalon’s
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Fortress) to scrap metal (Sam Penaso’s Metalscape I and 2), artists
grappled with “ the politics of survival, the limits of human talent
and discernment, the species of a changing life world, inventions
and technologies, suffering, wellbeing.“ A number of them attested
(as photographs of survivors picking up the pieces of their shattered
lives show), to what extent the great American novelist William
Faulkner called man’s capacity “not just to endure but to prevail.”
Meanwhile, the choice of Jess Ayco for a retrospective was
serendipitous because if there was an artist who transcended
boundaries, it was Jess. Given his many-sided talent, it was not
surprising that Jess’ retrospective covered works that ranged, among
others, from photographs to paintings; from sculptures to set and
lighting designs pf plays he directed. Hence, it was apt that the
usherettes in the show at the storied ancestral house museum Balay
ni Tana Dicang in Talisay wore costumes he designed for his many
productions with color combinations only Jess could dream of.
In his curatorial note to the Ayco retrospective entitled Fugue Frolic,
art historian and critic Patrick Flores decried the fact that while the
heroes in the history of the struggle for modernism in Philippine
art are those based in Manila, accounts gloss over figures based in
the provinces who nevertheless played a significant role in giving the
art scene a “more robust and textured character.”
Jess Ayco was certainly one of them for though born in Manila he
traced his roots to Bacolod. Flores contends Ayco deserves to be
“more sharply profiled as a modern artist whose artistic sympathy
was broad and inspiring” because “his medium and range of themes
were diverse and his vision was ample and venturesome.” Jess, for
whom no artistic work was too humble, refused to dumb down his
art works for the Bacolod provincial audience and brought friends
like Paris-based Nena Saguil to Bacolod to exhibit her works and to
lecture. Consequently when La Consolacion College colleagues like
Luisa Medel Reyes used to tease him about his audience’s inability
to pronounce the esoteric titles of his art works like Fugue Frolic, let
alone, understand them, his characteristic response was an eloquent
shrug and an enigmatic smile.
No such esoteric treat awaited participants to the 14th VIVA ExCon
that a rejuvenated Iloilo City waited twenty years to re-host. Its
former glory restored by a vibrant economy, the once “Queen City of
the South” welcomed the 2014 Biennale with a bang that showcased
its many museums, galleries and old structures that had undergone
adaptive re-use. Its pride in its history and traditions reflected in