Bose Nova: Return of The Native
Bose Nova: Return of The Native
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, August 06, 1988
I FIRST heard of Santiago Bose as a fourth grader vacationing in Baguio. But "vacationing" is the wrong word. To be more specific, I was recovering from a stubborn childhood ailment, and the mountain air was said to be good for me. In a sense, I virtually grew up in Baguio, and if one lives there for any length of time, one inevitably hears of the Boses.
Santiago's father was some kind of highlands bigwig and a one-time Chief of the Baguio Police Department. If I recall correctly, his family lived in a charming house not far from their petrol station overlooking the Lourdes steps from Quezon Hill. I remember visiting a school chum there more than once or twice; he would board with the Boses during the hot summer months, and I craved familiar company. My friend spoke often of Santiago Bose as a vibrant, thoroughly-outgoing youth about five years our senior. I quite imagined him to be a mythical mountain prince bronzed by the elements - a budding artist and a ladies' man besides - and even in those days, I envied him his vitality.
Appropriately, that very same boundless energy has since become the hallmark of Bose's gung-ho career as a visual artist. While I never actually got to meet him, Bose's lively, wit-spun images waged frequent lightning raids on my frail, post-adolescent consciousness, appearing full-blown in magazines, posters, galleries - and even more significantly, on the livingroom walls of not a few older artists whom I admired. The gritty Lee Aguinaldo, an early influence of mine, liked much of Bose's produce. So did the empirical filmmaker Maurice "Peque" Gallaga and the poet-cum-talent scout Alfred "Krip" Yuson. To them, Santiago Bose typified an exciting new breed of young Filipino artists, adventurous almost to a fault and intensely committed to their work, attuned to the changing whims of western art but ever aware of their own vast cultural reserves.
Bose, being of certifiable, Igorot lineage, was eminently well-suited for the role of "pathfinder" in the local artworld's growing fascination with ethnic and ancestral sources. After all, he had only to tap the ancient culture of his forebears, the surviving rituals and pervading iconography of his immediate surroundings, to arrive at what was manifestly, essentially "Pinoy." And to his further credit, young Bose's zest for experimentation drove him to contemporize his tribal references, exploring and not really exploiting its power to edify his own markedly-contemporary produce, calling on his ancestral roots only when he could bend them to his artistic will as malleable imagery beyond their nostalgic or anthropological gloss. Truly, it can be said that Santiago Bose - like the wandering heartthrob Ben Cabrera and the premiere indigenous sculptor Junyee - was in no small way responsible for the greening (or "browning"?) of our recent visual arts. And had he produced nothing else, his "pathfinding" alone would amost certainly have assured him a niche in our contemporary art history.
As fate and Santiago Bose would have it, the artist was already well in his prime when he packed his bags for New York City in 1984: Apparently, his brimming self-confidence and his occasional visits abroad had convinced him that his proper place was in the art capital of the world. But two years and a handful of pocket-exhibits later, an untimely death in the family brought Bose home to us posthaste, his North American campaign cut short in midstream. Some say that he was on the verge of making genuine headway in the land of milk and honey. Others say that his departure was timely, even merciful. Still others were unaware of his return altogether.
If Bose's decidedly-lacklustre homecoming had failed to elicit resounding applause (his 1987 installation at the Penguin Gallery in Malate was reportedly taken down ahead of schedule and pelted with verbal abuse), his major installation work, currently occupying both the Small Gallery and Window Garden of the CCP, shows him to be in excellent form. Robust and vigorous as ever, he has closed ranks with his primal spirits once more, conjuring a startling organic tableau as compelling and as provocative as any ancestral rite of passage. And had we thought, even for a moment, that the mountain prince's legendary fortitude and vitality had finally deserted him, we need only look to envy.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Bose Nova: Return of The Native” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, August 06, 1988
