The artist: Sid Gomez Hildawa, current department director for the visual arts at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, a recipient of the 1990 Thirteen Artists Awards, and who has had numerous solo and group art shows here and abroad, the most recent of which was his one-man exhibition of works at Toki Artspace in Tokyo, Japan last year, after participating in the International Art Biennale of Havana, Cuba in 2000.
The venue: The 1000 sq. ft. gallery of the Ayala Museum located at the ground floor of the Makati Stock Exchange building on Ayala Avenue.
The materials: 151 color photographic prints, each measuring 3-1/2 x 11 inches, taken with a regular point-and-shoot camera with panoramic frame setting, available light, no flash; and 151 red push pins.
And what have you got? An engaging and quite cheerful art installation entitled "Expanding Choker Project" focusing on what made quite a splash initially as a beachwear accessory – the puka shell choker – but which has swam its course into casual fashion, cutting across gender, creed, race and age.
The 151 panoramic format photographs showing various necks wearing the same white puka shell necklace are installed almost edge to edge in a line that traverses approximately 141 ft. of the entire wall area of the gallery, as if forming a giant choker itself, with the photograph as the modular unit instead of the puka shell, if not serving as a tape measure to approximate the perimeter of the gallery.
The laminated photographs, cleared from the floor at 1.4 meters, are attached to the walls by glue gun at the reverse side and tucked by a red push pin at the center of the necklace image on the obverse side, as if suggesting that each of the puka shell necklace has a red orb stone at its heart. The simulation calls to mind late 19th century specimens, which appeared in France in the 1860s and in England in the 1880s. The chokers of this era featured a central gem that could either be detached or worn as a brooch.
Hildawa’s installation conveys both implied and actual realities – a double entendre that may well string together what the exhibit aims to ramify. The installation expands on the meaning of the choker, an item of personal adornment and so-called because of the way it hugs the wearer’s neck. While underlining the choker’s original constrictive nature, the exhibition strings in visual metaphors for connectivity and community.
The sense of constriction: As a piece of jewelry, the choker is a very intimate apparel. A fashion staple through the ages, it is a tight-fitting necklace that wraps around the column of the neck. The earliest known chokers date back to 2500 B.C. Uncovered from this period were some of the most awesome samples, which consisted of alternating gold and lapis lazuli triangular beads in a royal gravesite in Ur, or present-day Iraq.
In the early 20th century, it enjoyed some sort of a fashion renaissance when chic chokers came to fore. They often came in the form of wide bands between four and six centimeters high. Due to their link to dog collars, they were widely referred to as colliers de chien.
These early versions of the choker, once worn, restricted the movement of the wearer as they tightly hugged the column of the neck. The wearer had to stay erect, if not stiff, as if he or she were always on the lookout, lest he or she choked because of the constrictive way of wearing the neckpiece.
This is not so much the case today.
The sense of connectivity and community: From a ritualistic appurtenance, the contemporary choker transcends the lines of fashion and accents just about anyone’s style. The styles range from embroidered bands, leather cords, and silver strands to strings of beads, shells, industrial metalwork and velvet ribbons.
The shiny white puka shell necklace, which is the raison d’être of the installation, became the fashion rage in the 1970s and early 1980s. In fact, collecting these shells was the first industry of Boracay, long before the island became the number one tourist destination.
The puka shell necklace, however, has been identified with Hawaii long before the days of legendary Duke Kahanamoku, and prior to Hawaii becoming the 50th state. The puka is actually the top of a colorful cone shell that has been trapped in the surf, smoothed and polished by the relentless waves and currents and washed up onto the shoreline. In Boracay today, one can still find remnants of the mounds of puka shells that were washed ashore and bleached centuries ago.
Since its integration as a piece of adornment, the white puka shell choker has become one big social leveler, if not a fashion equalizer. It has bedecked the necks of the rich and famous, as well as the anonymous hoi polloi. Unwittingly, it has been essentialized as an item of contemporary fashion.
The crowd that came during the artist’s opening reception reflected the connectivity spawned by the white puka shell necklace. Physically surrounded by the huge picture installation, it was a motley crowd of establishment and fledglings, teachers and students, art cognoscenti and dilettantes, taste arbiters, fashion victims and fashionistas, the young and the old – in short, a happy mixed community who came either in suits and barongs or in casual tees.
The 151 images that Hildawa uses in the installation similarly mirror this community, where people of diverse backgrounds and stations in life are gathered together because of the white puka shell choker. The faces need not have to be shown, one probable reason being that it can be you or me, or anybody, if not everybody. Hildawa’s decision to dramatically crop the pictures to show faceless people deserves notice as it emphasizes the ideas of anonymity and accessibility. In fact, in securing the necklace, one does not have to go to the polished salons of high fashion or elitist shops. It can be procured in flea markets where anybody can happen to be.
Puka, of course, is a Hawaiian word meaning "hole." Thus, puka shell is a "shell with a hole." But the hole is also an opening. Taken in this light, it is a doorway, which interestingly happens to be the other meaning attached to the Hawaiian puka.
It is this second meaning that Hildawa opts to foreground in his very timely art foray. No matter what grave crises come our way today, we should look at them as openings for concerted actions and convictions. Through his art, Hildawa opens the door for people to get connected with one another to achieve a common purpose to benefit all.
Hildawa joins the league of artists who have explored on the choker as a subject matter in art. The tradition began from as early as the Mesopotamian period to contemporary times when artists like René Lalique down to Dolce & Gabana and Anne Klein crafted gorgeous, decorative chokers along extravagant styles which reflect the glorious samples seen centuries earlier.
The choker has been depicted in quite a number of paintings, particularly in portraiture, from as early as the Renaissance when Hans Holbein the Younger painted in 1526 the portrait of Jane Seymour, third wife of King Henry VIII, wearing a carcanet, a choker that comes with a pendant along with a similar longer necklace.
Sir Anthony Van Dyck did the portrait of Henrietta María, wife of Charles I of England, wearing a single-strand pearl choker, c.1639. James Tissot, on the other hand, painted the portrait of the Princess de Broglie wearing a blue fabric-backed choker set with diamonds, c.1895. And in 1906, Gustav Klimt executed the portrait of Fritza Reidler wearing a choker with 15 strands of pearls attached to a panel in the center.