Statement art,
Disembodiment was previously exhibited at Bulwagan ng Dangal in UP Diliman.
CAMOUFLAGE
If Disembodiment is unabashed about its stand against EJKs, Statistics by Mideo Cruz is more subdued.
At first glance, the painting looks like a camouflage pattern one usually finds on military uniforms, but a closer look reveals individual figures of EJK victims make up the camouflage pattern.
“It is fascism interpreted in a subtle way,” said Mr. Cruz of his work, adding that, “It is the statistics of people dying, which looks like a camouflage, but they are actually teddy bears; symbols of fascism.”
Mr. Cruz made headlines last month when he released a portrait of President Rodrigo R. Duterte on social media — he Photoshopped the president’s head onto an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and replaced the traditional image of the Earth in the figure’s left hand for a gun. He calls the work LordDigs.
Mr. Cruz has been reconfiguring images since the 1990s including those of Ferdinand Marcos and Cory Aquino, in what he calls his Neo Deities series.
He said he does not make these works to be controversial so people will talk about them. “Art becomes controversial because of the people who look at it. I just do what I do. Sometimes, they become controversial because of social media, like my recent work [ LordDigs]. I’ve always wanted to do that, nilabas ko lang sa (I just released it on) social media and it went viral. These are the mementos of history, what we are, where we are now,” he said.
Fully recovered, “and more relaxed” after the brouhaha stirred by his controversial work at the Cultural Center of the Philippines exhibit Kulo back in 2011, he said criticism is always healthy.
“Hindi lagi kailangang masahihin ang likod mo; i- entertain mo ’yung negative comments kasi doon ka natututo kung mas effective ba yung trabaho mo ( You can’t always have your back massaged; you have to entertain negative comments because that is how you learn to be more effective at what you do). Besides, you cannot please everyone especially on social media — ’di mo na alam kung ano ang lipunan, sino ang totoong tao ( you do not know what is what in society, who is the real person),” he said.
‘BASTUSAN’
Boy D.’s work may have been made back in 2003, but Relasyon is still relevant. His work is a depiction of the symbiotic, but often parasitic relationships between nations and people. To illustrate this, he drew a man and a woman in a sexual act (“69”), but the woman is fragile while the man is more plump.
“Ang relasyon ng kapwa sa kapwa o bansa sa bansa ay bastusan, vulgar (the relationship between people or countries is vulgar),” he said about the 15-year-old work, adding that while society seemed to become more civilized since then this is not the case — “[ N]gayon, tignan mo, nagkaron tayo ng presidenteng bastos. So bastusan na talaga ( but now, look, we ended up with a vulgar president. So it is truly vulgar),” he said.
The artists participating in the show all agree that as cultural workers, they need to make a stand about society’s perennial problems.
“The artworks would set an opinion or attitude toward an issue and they become a documented stand of an artist. Especially now in social media and the proliferation of memes, there’s an impact about an artwork that tackles both the basic and complex ideas,” said Mr. Sicat. —
“Hindi lagi kailangang masahihin ang likod mo; i- entertain mo ’yung negative comments kasi doon ka natututo kung mas effective ba yung trabaho mo. Besides, you cannot please everyone especially
on social media — ’di mo na alam kung ano ang lipunan, sino ang totoong tao.” — Mideo Cruz