Yuson’s New Video Documentary Nine Filipina Artists: The Movie!
Yuson’s New Video Documentary Nine Filipina Artists: The Movie!
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, February 13, 1988
IN a cruel rank and file system where the players vie for grants and audiences, status talks. And Alfred "Krip" Yuson has earned the public eye. Some of his status was in fact derived from years of combing the underground like a beat. Not everything in life comes easily, and the underground is a school of hard knocks.
But fate has been good to Alfred Yuson and has smiled on him in his prime. Having now turned the corner into middle life, he unfolds like a pearl, peaking at precisely the age that divides the men from the boys. Once known primarily as an award-winning renegade poet who lived and loved the part, he has recently burst into the big time with an earth-shaking Palanca Grand Prize for the Novel and an equally impressive Asiaweek First Prize for Short Story — possibly the fairest literary plums in the region.
That our literary world’s man-of-the-moment should choose at precisely this time unveil a 50-minute video documentary on “Nine Filipina Visual Artists” is reason enough to view the “film” seriously. Making the rounds in recent weeks, its formal unveiling at the Mowelfund Foundation and at the Pinaglangan Galleries in San Juan was attended by a healthy cross section of painters, sculptors, poets, filmmakers and critics, representing both genders and their tendencies.
It is important to note that Yuson’s large-format video was originally made for television — with all that the term implies — financed by the new Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) for an ill-starred extravaganza to have been called “State of the Arts.” The program was later shelved and Yuson then endeavored to complete the documentary on his own.
Featured by Yuson are sculptresses Agnes Arellano and Julie Lluch Dalena, painters Imelda Endaya, Phyllis Zaballero and Pardo de Leon, printmaker Brenda Fajardo, ceramist Nelfa Querubin, creative photographer Ami Miciano, and performance artist Jean Marie Syjuco. The eldest in the group is probably in her 40s; the youngest is 28. None of the women artists here are particularly young or old, and in general, can all be said to have come into their own with a generation of feminist vanguards.
It is surprising, therefore, that very little is actually said about feminism in the visual arts — and then only by an obviously submissive Julie Dalena! In place of well-worn issues, Yuson has opted to focus his attention on a diverse range of approaches to art-making, and thereby succeeds in sustaining our curiosity throughout.
For instance, we have women visual artists who shun all manner of contrivance like the plague, as well as those who exploit hype as a matter of course. There are those who swear by their medium and those who swear at it. There are those who work incessantly and those in virtual hibernation. There are those still learning their trade and those already at the peak of their creativity. There are those who romance foreign icons and those who have taken up arms against the west. There are those who tread the straight and narrow, and those obsessed with untiring exploration. Most, if not all of these women appear to be exceptionally gifted in their own right, and just as fiercely outspoken.
So if Yuson’s “film” manages to unravel anything at all, it’s probably that our women artists are as individualistic and as wrapped up in their own work as the men. Also, that while our artists often seem to be hopelessly naive, there is the charm of the good earth in each of them that their sleek western counterparts would kill for. It’s good to remember that our contemporary art is at best in its adolescence, a clumsy and confused state that immediately precedes the flowering of youth at its most perfect. While our gradual ripening may be in the works, it is premature for us at this point to attempt to categorize or shape the course of our art-making — as it were, to build fences or to slip on girdles so early in the game. There is time enough for everything. And when we finally do emerge in splendor, valuable keepsakes like Yuson’s tidy little “film” will serve to remind us of the way we were.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Yuson’s New Video Documentary Nine Filipina Artists: The Movie!” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, February 13, 1988
