MANILA, Philippines - The UP College of Fine Arts, Department of Visual Communication, presents “Kapital,” an homage to labor and the many selves that make it, which is on view until Sept. 18 at the UP Vargas Museum, Diliman, QC.
A tribute is at once embodiment and revelation: it maps for us the fraught terrain of global markets and the highly mobile capital that tills it.
From the common metaphors of bodies bent from tedious toil to the menacing routine of mechanized work and on to the wastelands of economies of porous borders, the vicious cycle that commands the global trade of products, consumed and disposed at bewildering rhythms, persists and reveals portents: ominous because capitalist systems thrive on versatile modes of veiling the consequences of progress.
A national economy reliant on far-off labor captures this deception, quite akin to the false promise handed to farmers by heirs of so-called democratic icons. Leaving in droves thus nameless, heralded heroes yet invisible, the presence of overseas workers is made palpable by boxes of goods sent over, or coffins marked by numbers. This invisible capital is marked by slovenly feet made for perpetual leaving as well as the equally eternal specter of hope. Drudgery is inscribed in torsos marked as targets, skin, and diseased flesh to be eaten up by the saw of a rusty machine. Greed is grind discerned in bodies that devour themselves, the excess of flesh and worldly want. Cityscapes are choked by this relentless drive, wastelands of inevitable loss and sacrifice. Implements without their wielders resolutely march to the hollow tempo of a hymn that heralds a new society.
These artists turn capital on its head by unmasking labor, honoring it as they craft images and scenes of struggle.
In drawing attention to the persistent ills that workers confront, they disclose as well the labor demanded by art and the very system that threatens to conceal it. Thus we find forms that attempt to defy its workings, until such time when the ploys of the market catch up and take over. Art itself is capital and we probe its circulations.