From Juan Luna to Geraldine Javier

MANILA, Philippines -In 2006, my father Jerry Acuzar relocated the Enriquez Mansion from Quiapo, Manila, to our property, Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar in Bagac, Bataan. The Enriquez Mansion was inaugurated in 1870 as the first UP School of Fine Arts building, producing stellar alumni comprised of Juan Luna, Felix Resureccion Hidalgo, Fernando Amorsolo, and Guillermo Tolentino, among others.

Throughout the century, however, the Enriquez Mansion went through multiple layers of reuse and adaptation — from an art school, it became a dormitory, then an abortion clinic, a live sex show venue, and eventually, a home to hundreds of informal settlers.

But today the mansion sits quietly in the Bagac countryside, withdrawn from its bewildered Quiapo past. And on May 18, my father and I hosted a group of artists, collectors and enthusiasts, to open the Escuela de Bellas Artes Contemporary Artspace, with an inaugural show entitled “Transference.” The exhibit features recent works by Alfredo Esquillo Jr., Renato Habulan and Geraldine Javier.

The Enriquez Mansion is once again a space for arts and culture; a site for creativity and discourse, just as I imagine it would have been in the 19th century, when the likes of Luna, Hidalgo, and even Jose Rizal would congregate in its bodegas and exchange their ideas, philosophies and experiences. The creations of Esquillo, Habulan and Javier have breathed new life into the space with a series of large-scale and life-sized installations. The exhibit is open to the public.

Curation

Choosing the artists for the inaugural show was hardly a challenge. It was through a friendly collaboration with the ladies from Tin-Aw Art Management, Dawn Atienza and Marya Demigillo-Salang that we were able to decide which artists and what works were to be part of the show. The dialogue between Tin-Aw and myself shaped the main thrust of Bellas Artes Projects, which is to encourage the discourse between heritage and contemporary culture by means of art production and community development activities.

The ground floor gallery contains a compilation of video, paintings and sculptures by Alfredo Esquillo Jr. and Renato Habulan. Upon encountering their recent show at the National University of Singapore Museum entitled “Semblance/Presence,” it was clear that their installation of sculpted tungkods entitled “Lakbay Panata” and “Trono ni Mang Lauro,” would be appropriate to the space, both visually and thematically. The selected pieces record their encounters with Quiapo, the “Pista ng Poong Nazareno” and Mang Lauro, a prophetic fixture of Plaza Miranda, who calls himself by the name of Kristong Hari. Their collaborative and individual works evoke tensions between belief and practice, illusion and reality, the spiritual and the material, power and vulnerability, ritual and reason. In this room, the physical and psychological power of their work is amplified by the adobe walls that enclose them.

Upstairs you will find a series of rooms, adorned with classical architectural elements that leave traces of Ionic columns both restored and untouched. It is through these untouched Ionic columns that one gets an idea of the state in which the structure was found in 2006. The columns are a crucial feature to this part of the building as it is not only an historical marker but it also marks the division of rooms and spaces, which are valuable for future exhibitions.

Ont his floor you will find Geraldine Javier’s room.

As you enter the room, you are brought into the world of “Mme. A,” a fictional character whose collection/obsession becomes the motivation for this part of the exhibition. Javier tells the story of Mme. A, a French or possibly Vietnamese woman who settled in the Philippines at the start of the last century. It is in this room where we see Geraldine Javier’s ability to transport us to another world and psyche.

Cabinet of curiosities

In her “Cabinet of Curiosities,” six cabinets containing objects collected, preserved and assembled into vitrines and onto plates entice one’s curiosity and child-like wonder. Organic elements such as leaves hammered onto the canvas, create a background for these objects, such as skeletons of frogs surrounded by her signature tatting lace, playfully assembled in a urinating position. In “Sing Me A Song,” she portrays herself as a child nestled on a hammock, supported by a room divider, and on the opposite side is a crib containing the skeleton of a cat, wrapped again in tatting lace. Such uncanny and whimsical compositions arouse child-like fascination with death and decay, reminding us of the trajectory of the collector. death and decay, reminding us of the trajectory of the collector. As art historian Tony Godfrey writes, “Objects create a mood even when we are not sure what they are. We areintrigued by what people make or collect. It often makes us think of what we toocollect or what would like to collect.”

Javier’s installations were first shown in Singapore in 2011 as part of an exhibition entitled “Museums of Everything,” then later on shown at the UP Vargas Museum in 2013. It is interesting to note that the works, including Esquillo and Habulan’s have traveled across borders, and have finally found a permanent place at Escuela de Bellas Artes.

This inaugural exhibition highlights he nature of the Las Casas Filipinas project, itself. As Tessa Guazon, in her essay for the show, writes, “The (artworks) point to transference, through evocations through trace whether of the past, or places diminished by the elements or withered by time. Nowhere is this inquiry more salient than in Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar, where collecting, it seems, has taken on a scale grander than most.”

Escuela de Bellas Artes is managed by Bellas Artes Projects, an agency that will generate cultural and artistic programs happening in and around the artspace. First on our agenda is to establish an artist-in-residence program that focuses on the interaction between artist, local artesans and the Bagac community.

Through the Bellas Artes Projects enterprise, we hope to create more exhibitions of this kind — ones that touch us on many levels and challenge us to think in different dimensions about our culture, heritage, and our individual behaviors. We hope to enrich the lives of not just the Bagac community, but the rest of the Filipino people as well.