‘Los nuevos indios bravos’

What could be a more provocative way to commemorate The Year of the Philippines in Spain than to see history repeat itself?

On Thursday, May 11, 2006, lofty ambition – impossible to imagine in the flurry of last-minute preparation – came to brilliant fruition. It was the day when "Filipiniana," the biggest and most comprehensive exhibition surveying the rich panoply of Philippine art and culture from the late 19th century to the present, opened to a massive audience at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque in Madrid – a turnout that, as one Madrileña put it, was impressive even by their own standards.

Juan Guardiola, the burly ex-chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona (MACBA), who two years ago managed to raise the eyebrows of not a few local museum directors, collectors and artists with his "brassy" approach to organizing what seemed then to be a quixotic endeavor by the Spanish cultural agency Casa Asia, looked understandably pleased as he toured journalists from leading Spanish newspapers and television networks through the show.

The exhibition space, roughly one and three quarters the size of our own Met Museum’s ground floor gallery, reminded me of a Romanesque church, with over 20 alcoves opening on both sides of the nave. Exhibition designer Angel Borrego took this architectural feature into consideration when he developed the plans for the display, and imagined the hall as the hull of a ship, where precious objects were kept in crates, awaiting safe passage and unraveling. This, he said, was also in keeping with the idea of "Filipiniana" as a way of classifying materials (books, photographs, artifacts) pertaining to our country, which are stored in an archival facility.

Honestly, I didn’t feel very comfortable with the curatorial approach in the beginning – particularly the idea of labeling the art and culture of the Philippines like exotica in a curio cabinet. The feeling was akin to imagining kinship with someone you had considered to be a close relative; only to realize that this relative saw you as some sort of oddity from a strange, faraway land.

I was imagining poor Madre España coming to terms with the reality of virtual strangers from across the globe, who show up at her doorstep claiming affinity and seeking acceptance. She receives them with sincerity if not warmth, and her manner of expression is polite, if not forthright. Yet she still seems awkward, struggling to, as Casa Asia director general Ion de la Riva wrote in his foreword to the exhibition catalogue, "advance the rapprochement."

This great effort to deal with, nay confront, an unavoidable truth is perhaps the best way to read Guardiola’s desire to undertake so much in one exhibition. That being said, I cannot commend him enough for taking on such a gargantuan task. In the collective memory, no one before him had been able to bring together so many objects to encapsulate the essential Filipino in a single display for the benefit of a foreign audience. Casa Asia also deserves a rousing bravo for seeking to bridge the gap between our two peoples.

The richness and complexity of this relationship is measured progressively, and expounded upon on many levels in "Filipiniana." Roughly, the show is divided into three sections, each one referring to a particular "historical moment."

"The Colonial Imaginary" (1521-1945) showcases early maps of the islands, botanical prints, vistas, rare Jose Honorato Lozano tipos del pais and letras y figuras interestingly mingled in true postmodern fashion with more contemporary works by Stephanie Syjuco and Manuel Ocampo, which hearken to similar cartographic and imagined renditions of the Philippines. Further tracing Spanish colonial society and its cultural legacy are rooms holding antiquarian first editions, splendid paintings by Juan Luna from the collections of the National Museum and the Biblioteca-Museu Victor Balaguer (the GSIS Luna "Parisian Life," which is also in the show, looks paltry in comparison) and, of special interest, late 19th century photographs culled mostly from Spanish libraries and, from a later period, the collection of John Silva and Jonathan Best.

I thought it food for thought and most appropriate in light of my earlier misgivings to see Jean Laurent’s photographs from the Madrid Exposition of 1887 in this section – a commercial and ethnographic exhibition that brought together Philippine flora inside the Crystal Palace, which was constructed specifically as a hothouse; products from the islands at the Mining and Industry (now Velasquez) Palace; and various aspects of Philippine culture, including actual villages reconstructed at the Retiro Park, complete with natives shipped in from each of the colony’s provinces and put on display garbed in traditional costumes, or producing typical crafts!

Further manifestations of occupation are manifested by materials on the American and Japanese period. The former was played out in photographs (those capturing battle scenes and casualties from the Philippine-American War were revelations), books, magazine covers and artworks from "peace time." Here, the landscape paintings of Juan Arellano, framed as if seen through windows, from the Lopez Memorial Museum collection, and the stunning "Interaction" by Victorio Edades, Galo Ocampo and Botong Francisco from the Eleuterio Pascual collection stood out. The latter was manifested by, among other materials, propaganda posters from the holdings of the UP Vargas Museum.

The next section, "Nation (1946-1986)" traverses the post-World War II period to the first EDSA People Power Revolution, and focuses on two aspects. The first is the emergence of the independent Philippine nation-state, and its search for identity as seen in cultural manifestations marked by an attempt to localize the Western. Here viewers can find works by the Neo-Realists with representative works by Arturo Luz, Vicente Manansala, David Medalla, Jose Joya, Lee Aguinaldo, Victor Oteyza, H. R. Ocampo, Alfonso Ossorio, J. Elizalde Navarro and Fernando Zobel from the collection of the Ateneo Art Gallery, as well as interesting discoveries such as a series of Fernando Zobel photographs from the Ayala Museum, and the iconic "Tawanan" by Anita Magsaysay-Ho on loan from the Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation, which I had never imagined would be so miniscule! The second revolves around "Imeldifica" zeroing in on the Iron Butterfly’s extravagance as well as her cultural pursuits that led to the establishment of institutions such as the CCP, whose forays into high art are represented by conceptual work by Roberto Chabet. Such excesses, coupled with the repression of civil liberties under the Conjugal Dictatorship became fodder for the rise of the Social Realist Movement in art, which is evinced by the works of Antipas Delotavo, Leonilo Doloricon, Renato Habulan, Pablo Baens Santos, and Edgar Talusan Fernandez, whose canvas on wooden armature sculpture, "Kinupot," had the honor of being selected as the featured artwork in the exhibition’s posters and banners.

The exhibition ends in fast-forward mode. "Memories of Overdevelopment (1986-2006)" is set amid the heady backdrop of globalization, terrorism, economic growth, and diaspora as well as more local anxieties in the social, political and religious sphere. The concerns mirrored by the art unleash the plethora of contemporary complexity, from the installation "Packing Up" by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, which consists of purposefully layered personal belongings elegantly stacked with a formalist eye for color and texture molded out of balikbayan boxes, stirringly evoking past and future journeys, to the critical references to a hybrid culture as shown in the late Santiago Bose’s work, where indigenous and foreign icons collide. Manuel Ocampo’s furious exorcisms and the now inactive Sanggawa’s parody of popular culture vis-à-vis Catholic religiosity are also quite emphatic. Sid Hildawa symbolically links together the far end of the exhibition hall, and the thematic diversity with an installation of photographs titled the "Choker Project." Continuing the discourse, tucked away in the furthest corner, Jose Legaspi’s devilishly excoriating drawings are mounted floor to ceiling. Juan Alcazaren coolly contextualizes the audience’s vantage point in this section with "The Sedimentation of the Mind is a Jumbled Museum," while Dindo Llana ups the anti-establishment ante with his not so subtle tin can label caricatures (Kudos to Guardiola for not succumbing to self-censorship and to the Philippine Embassy in Madrid for intelligently turning a blind eye on what could have easily raised a diplomatic firestorm!)

At the opening after-party, which was held at an elegant restaurant beside the hotel where the Philippine party was billeted, National Museum director Cora Alvina took the floor to personally thank Guardiola and Casa Asia for their supreme effort. She was followed by the National Museum’s senior consultant John Silva, who eloquently recounted a similar scene that took place over a century ago. That night, the expatriate ilustrados hosted a dinner to honor Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo for winning gold and silver medals respectively, at the 1884 Madrid Exposition of Fine Art. Held aloft as paragons of excellence, proof of the skill and superiority of the Filipinos, it could rightfully be said, Silva added, that art gave birth to a people’s struggle for independence.

As cheers erupted and the group raised their glasses to toast the success of "Filipiniana," I suspect that one niggling question remained on the minds of los nuevos indios bravos: How far had we really gone since that time?

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"Filipiniana" runs at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid, Spain until Sept. 24.