Indigenous To What? Indigenous To Whom?
Indigenous To What?
Indigenous To Whom?
Pertinent footnotes to the browning of Philippine Art.
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco [Gorilla In The Gallery]
Published in: Philippine Graphic Magazine, May 24, 1993
With its strong references to ethnic and traditional Pinoy culture, the trend popularly called "indigenous Art" is even now emerging as a major art movement of our time. The writer—a painter, critic, and recent TOYM awardee for the arts—shares some rare slants on the subject in this GRAPHIC series addressing current issues in Philippine Art.
The year is 1984. Fourteen months after the Aquino assassination, an ailing Marcos dictatorship feigns invincibility.
It's business as usual in the garden of the muses. Balikbayan museologist Eva Toledo phones me to say that I have been selected to represent the country in a major exhibition dubbed 3 Faces of Philippine Art in Munich, West Germany. A tenderfoot campaigner eager for exposure overseas, I am as happy as a hot toad in a jacuzzi. So happy, in fact, that I drink myself silly and fall down a flight of stairs.
But wait, the story continues. The divine Ms. Toledo, liaison for the German Cultural Centre in Manila, phones a second time to add that my work would be "going to Germany as part of a new experimental section"—henceforth to be known as the "Indigenous Category." That has me more than a little perplexed and worried. I look up "indigenous" in the dictionary. It's a fairly specific word:
"Produced, growing or living naturally in a particular region..." I sweat it out for another week, wondering if the organizers of the exhibition haven't got me confused with someone else. Truth to tell, there's nothing leafy or green about the work I do.
On the appointed day, the eminent Harvard art historian Dr. Rod Paras-Perez, curator of the Munich show, visits my studio in Aviles to select the appropriate artworks for freighting. He picks two paintings, four hefty box-constructions, and a freestanding sculptural object—all from a series I am completing for a one-man-show at Ray Albano's CCP.
Much of what he picks is laden with elements that are fused into tableaus and scatterings: old jars and bottles, faded sepia snapshots, antique handbills and prints, tattered books and clippings, stampitas and religious medals, animal skins and hair, Spanish lace, embroidery, native talismans and trophies, lumber, balustres and house fixtures, etc... the lot of it rescued from ancestral homes in the district vacated in line with Imelda's beautification directives.
I realize from Dr. Perez's selection that his signature-term "indigenous" includes not only organic and homespun materials, but also elements and images common to the artist's cultural milieu and his environment. It is a viewpoint that I readily imbibe.
Prior to its departure for Germany, the show 3 Faces of Philippine Art is previewed at the old Museum of Philippine Art (MOPA) on T.M. Kalaw Street, a modernist preserve administered by the imperious Arturo Luz. With me in the "Indigenous Category" are three artists whose work I am, as yet, unfamiliar with: Pacita Abad, Ching Abad Santos and Roberto Feleo. Except for Abad Santos's monochromatic coconut hangings, there is little here that is leafy or green. Abad's impressive trapuntos are quilted canvases embellished with a profusion of tiny shells and buttons, while Feleo's layered plywood cut-outs are painted with exotic scenery of a quasi-historical nature.
Nevertheless, critics are enraged by Dr. Perez's insistence on a separate category for our works, and all the more incensed by the tag "indigenous." Still decidedly internationalist in their outlook, they brand the move "parochial," "counter-progressive" and "primitivistic"—even as they resist commenting directly on the works in view. The jaunty Englishman Michael Adams, in an item penned for the art periodical San Juan, asks if oil paintings should now be considered "indigenous" to the art of Saudi Arabia. Another artworld character, the diminutive and feisty Roberto Chabet, suggests that Dr. Perez shed his trousers for a "bahag" (native loincloth). Perez counters that Chabet—a known disciple of western trends—should don a blonde wig instead. The controversy boils into a stew.
The four artists lumped into the "Indigenous Category"—Pacita, Ching, Bobby Feleo and myself—are oblivious to the catcalls, oblivious even to this bit of history unfolding. We are delighted just to be in the Munich show.
The year is 1986. By the time the Marcoses tumble, the peculiar, almost ludicrous term "Indigenous Art" has gained wide acceptance, and the trend itself has acquired a steady following even among the cognoscenti.
In major competitions, a growing number of "indigenous artists" are lording it over their more conventional rivals, bagging praise and prizes for their elaborately worked surfaces, native weaves and tribal patterning, beadwork, beaten and patinated metal trim, organic debris, and their now-familiar retablo and recuerdo motifs. Bamboo, twigs, stone and fiber are increasingly and more extensively in use, as are images appropriated from both popular and esoteric Filipiniana.
The signs of a stylistic renaissance are everywhere. More and more critics are wagering in print that "the indigenous tendency" will survive the decade to become a major art movement of the '90s. Galleries substantiate that view by hosting more exhibitions exploring the genre.
Developments abroad also contribute to the growing interest in "indigenous" and alternative materials. The shamanistic work of the German artist Joseph Beuys, in particular—taking much of the civilized world by storm—erases lingering apprehensions that the "indigenous" movement in Manila runs counter to the international mainstream.
But it is politics that enters full-blown from stage left. The EDSA Revolution unleashes a wave of fierce—almost rabid—nationalistic fervor, and our art institutions break legs to toe the new line. The Social Realists, many of them propaganda artists who were previously reviled as "troublemakers with a price tag," are toasted as heroes by the Aquino regime. And "Indigenous Art," with its strong references to ethnic and traditional Pinoy culture, is swallowed whole by banner-waving militants. Virtually overnight, social consciousness has become the national sentiment, and the "indigenous" genre has become the national look.
The year is 1988. The show Heavenly Bodies Almost—a relatively minor exhibition of my work at a Malate bar—opens in mid-April. In it, I fuse "indigenous" materials like twigs, feathers, stones and fiber with common household articles: among these, a broom-handle, a toilet float, utensils, an old rag, a ceramic potty, rubber slippers and garden shears.
The show is roundly criticized for its "insensitive and irreverent use of indigenous materials," etc.—confirming my perception that such materials have now become objects of veneration.
Weeks later, in a public forum on the same subject, the question is raised as to this artist’s "right to handle indigenous materials at all," considering "his urban upbringing and lack of anthropological training." Apparently, the "indigenous" genre has not only become sacred turf, it has become hot property jealously guarded by a self-annointing elite.
I endeavor never again to allow the use of the term "indigenous" in reference to my work. Why fool around with religion?
The year is 1990. "Indigenous Art" has become the chief concern of progressive artists in this country, and the bandwagon is on a roll. "Going native" is de rigueur, and a veritable tug-of-war exists between various artworld cliques and factions in their intense rivalry for dominance in the field.
Never before now has the "indigenous" movement enjoyed greater emphasis, attention, funding, and scholarly consideration. Books and other authoritative material on art carry comprehensive sections on the subject, usually under its own heading. "Indigenous artists" dominate art shows and delegations dispatched overseas. And art competitions throughout the country provide a separate category for "indigenous" and alternative materials, usually under the banner of Mixed Media.
Yet, talks and symposia on "Indigenous Art" are like a hundred crickets in the dark, vibrating in concert. One school contends that "indigenous" is an umbrella term for virtually all familiar sources of imagery and materials, regardless of origin or vintage. Still another school is determined to forge a direct route back to our ethnic forebears, confining their sources of inspiration to tribal crafts, rituals and iconography. The prevailing view, however, is that the term "indigenous" applies specifically to organic or natural materials like hemp, rattan, leaves, seedpods and bark. Ironically, in their efforts to define an alternative to classical means, many artists are jumping from one restrictive mold into another.
The year is 1992. From the new Cultural Center of the Philippines comes a letter informing me that I am to be conferred a CCP 13 Artists Award for my "original contributions . . . to the self-definition of the Filipino"—particularly "through art exploring the use of indigenous materials."
The award, given every two years, carries a cash prize of P15,000, which is "meant to assist (me) in preparing a major new body of work for a group exhibition of the awardees at the CCP Main Gallery." Succeeding communications from the CCP express its preference that the work for the exhibit be in the "indigenous" manner.
Mapping out a perimeter two kilometers in radius from my home in south suburbia, I prepare a list of business establishments in the Sucat-Alabang areas offering a variety of goods and services. The list eventually includes a manufacturer of high-kitsch furniture, a gravestone carver, a florist, a maker of illuminated plastic signs, a landscaper, a sash factory, a tailoring shop specializing in sportsgear and athletic uniforms, a hobby store, and a billboard painter. I conceive nine works comprised entirely of elements ordered from these establishments. It is a series exploring the range of materials "indigenous" to my suburban environment.
Again, the works are attacked in print for their "affectatious wit," for "missing the point entirely," and for "deliberately making fun of the awards." The fanaticism of the EDSA years is gone, but the narrow-mindedness persists.
Often, when laboring in the dark, how to look is more important than where to look. And in any case, you can let your fingers do the walking.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Indigenous To What? Indigenous To Whom?” (page 1 of 2), Philippine Graphic Magazine, May 24, 1993
Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Indigenous To What? Indigenous To Whom?” (page 2 of 2), Philippine Graphic Magazine, May 24, 1993
