Santo Santi, Viva Bose!

During his lifetime, he was acclaimed in manifold ways.

The Artist as Medicine Man. The Shaman from Baguio. The Brave in the Arts. An Ethnic Artist. An Artist Without a Conventional Top Hat. High Spirited. Timely. Unorthodox.

Surely, he was all these. Such that his death last Dec. 1 leaves a gaping void in Philippine art. Santiago Pavila Bose, 53, a.k.a. Santi, in all peregrinations of the term and at the risk of being irreverent which he surely would love, was one hell of a Filipino artist.

Hail, Santo Santi! Philippine art has a new patron saint in heaven. Viva Bose!

An indefatigable vanguard of various media, Santi was among the early pioneers to have incorporated with art making Philippine indigenous materials. Santi’s collages and assemblages proliferated with bamboo nose flutes, driftwood, estampitas, paper bills and empty bottles, to cite but only a few, thereby contributing a significant share in the discourse on cultural roots and integrity through the arts. Displaying an indubitable knack for trying out heretofore uncharted paths, he ventured on using new materials like volcanic ash from Pinatubo in "Drown My Soul in the Chico Dam" to successfully achieve sculptural and solid effect.

Bose also appropriated and merrily juxtaposed Philippine pre-Hispanic symbols like the Manunggul jar and the bulul with Western symbols.

One of his significant works, "Pasyon at Rebolusyon," done in 1983, made ingenious use of dried twigs and branches to re-construct the mystic altar of Bernardo Carpio. Three vertical banners replete with the native religious imagery associated with Mt. Banahaw were installed above it to form a colorful retablo.

Prior to his death, Santi was a member of E-Banggaan to demonstrate how much his art had evolved from applying traditional pigments in painting to actually manipulating pixels in the new media art.

E-Banggaan began in October 1999 with a hand placed on a scanner by Alfredo Roces in Sydney. The same image was sent to fellow artists for them to interact. E-Banggaan, or Interaction-E, pioneers this new artistic horizon. It seeks to learn about the workings and the limitations of the Internet. Going beyond mere passing of images through the Net, the artists of E-Banggaan confront one another’s individual visual expressions and transform them into collaborative efforts, images resulting from interaction and "collisions" (banggaan) with others in another part of the world who may even embrace very different sensibilities. The digital language of computer graphics is the medium with which the various artists interact, but traditional art media can also readily come into play. Images can be printed out, reworked in traditional media, and scanned.

E-Banggaan may be compared to a jazz session, where various musicians are given full play to bring in their own improvisations in solo passages while integrating with the basic beat or theme of the music. It is art as a collaborative effort as opposed to art as exclusively one individual’s creation. The notion is not really anathema to art practices, for after all architecture involves a team effort of various individuals with various skills, and music is performed by various musicians playing various instruments; theater and film are decidedly the products of group effort.

Today, the E-Banggaan is composed of noted Filipino artists scattered all over the world. It counts on Alfredo Roces in Sydney, Melissa Camacho and Rodolfo Samonte in Los Angeles, Claro Cortes III in Singapore, Glenn Bautista, Ben Razon, Bencab, Tiny Nuyda and Pandy Aviado in the Philippines, to cite but just a few.

For Banggaan, Santi contributed "Satzemno" which elicited a "banggaan" with Ding Roces, Glenn Bautista and Rod Samonte.

Santi’s passing saddened the members of the Banggaan. For many of them, it was one shocking way to start the day to find in the mails the news about his demise, considering that over a month ago, another equally gifted Filipino artist, Nonoy Marcelo, succumbed at 60.

Ben Razon remembers Santi as a regular at Chino Medina’s Oarhouse (next to Hobbit House) when he would come down to Malate from Baguio. "For all the different shades of his life and personality, I knew him to be a true artist who stayed close to his roots indeed," quipped Ben.

For Glenn Bautista, his schoolmate at the UP College of Fine Arts in the late ’60s to early ’70s, Santi was "like a walking artwork. Art was the only thing important to him."

Rod Samonte, for his part, posted this note: "Unlike, many of our Banggaan members from UP I did not have the pleasure of knowing him well in person, but I do know of his art and passion. I probably met him briefly a few times maybe in an opening or two in Manila in the ’70s, exactly when or where I cannot pinpoint now. He preferred to stay in Baguio and that’s probably why I did not have much contact with him. Interestingly, in a recent dialogue with Ding Roces here in the pages of Banggaan, he was one of the artists I mentioned that might have been included in the 13 Artists of the New Century, had the authors not limited the number to that silly thirteen. Santi, may you rest in peace. You may be gone but your art will live forever."

Santi was born in Baguio City on July 23, 1949 to Mariano Bose and Lourdes Pavila. He took up Architecture at the Mapua Institute of Technology from 1965 to 1967. Later, he transferred to the University of the Philippines where he took up painting at the College of Fine Arts.

A Thirteen Artists recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1976, Bose also earned the grand prize for print in 1981 from the Art Association of the Philippines and was a finalist in the 1982 Mobil Art Awards.

In 1980, he earned a grant from the Linang Project of the Council of Living Traditions in recognition of his interest in using indigenous materials in his art making. He was also one-time chair of the Baguio Arts Guild.

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For comments, send e-mail to ruben_david.defeo@up.edu.ph.