Dengcoy Miel
Into the crevices of his soul
‘There is no denying that the velocity of an idea, especially good ones, has to be encrusted in paint or stone. This is the essence of the work itself, that ideas can be conflated on a surface that is not of it but becomes it when executed properly.’
“It is an attempt to find an index for a fresh narrative,” said DengCoy Miel, elaborating on the catalyst for his latest show, “Corpus” at the West Gallery, which he described as the culmination of efforts to arrive at a more condensed approach to aesthetics— one that can easily be identified as his own. Featuring 12 paintings, sculptures, and sketches, Miel embarks on distinct image-making through “personal histories with their attendant symbolisms that are inherently mine.” Miel, however, is humbled by this self-imposed challenge, calling it a “tall order” owing to having borrowed a Peter Paul Rubens portrait of King Phillip II and a drawing of
George Stubbs for a central panel triptych during the process.
In further developing harmonious integration within his process, Miel is unafraid to critically introspect on the forces that drive him to create, particularly in relation to his fascination for religious iconography, often found incorporated in his works. “My mother was a former Carmelite nun,” Miel said. “She fell in love and married my father, a writer and an editor of a provincial newspaper. So when I was growing up I was surrounded by her instruments of faith—the rosaries,
estampitas, oversized scapulars that only nuns wore, prayer books, and the like.”
Miel recalled drawing on some of them when he was young, saying he somehow relished in the iconoclastic nature of the deed. “The images in them were my rosetta stone, establishing this visual lexicon that I would use later on in my paintings.” Miel’s uncle, a former school administrator, expressed deep devotion to the Church by designing animated religious processional floats, writing plays, designing costumes, and props, and being the proud owner of the most elaborate nativity crèche in town. “At the centerpiece of this elaborate Christmas tableau was the family heirloom—an antique ivory Madonna and St Joseph,” Miel recalled, calling this period as “the best years in his youth.”
While Miel relishes in the rites and rituals that strengthen faith, he abhors the incessant commercialization of religion. “Monetizing religion is just wrong,” he said, “Heaven should be here on Earth not in some magical place elsewhere.” Over the years, Miel says he has been progressively disillusioned by religion, adding that it behooves on him that maybe somehow, someday, he may have to “do a reboot of his Catholic faith.” Nevertheless, religion, in the national context, continues to be a point of fascination.
“The good thing about being in a highly Catholic, third-world country like the Philippines,” Miel said, “is that the rich have a higher sense of charity and the poor, in return, bestows eternal gratitude on the giver.” This, he said, trickled down through the padrino system, further emphasised amid the dire provenance of a political leadership. “These conditions prefigures in our daily lives,” he said. “We are inside of it and as artists of conscience, we tend to resist these irritants in our social, economic, religious, cultural, and political life—we react with our art.”
Miel draws a comparison between religion and spirituality. “My faith is intact,” he said. “I just stopped attending mass but I have not stopped believing, I guess that’s the spiritual aspect of it. It has not wavered.” Religion, he said, is structural whereas being spiritual is deeply personal and he firmly believes in its supernatural aspect. “I collect religious objects for their aesthetic and tributary qualities,” he said. “My art comes into it as a questioning device, to test myself how far I could go to deconstruct this belief system that I was born to and baptized in before I could embrace it again with the renewed vigor of a penitent-convert.” The reframing of his faith often leads Miel to contemplations on death, which he often tackles through humor and art. “Death is just another stage in this whole cycle,” he said. “After death we all just return to this quantum void as atoms hurtling about in space. This notion can only be matched by our own understanding of it.”
This understanding, or perhaps his relentless attempt toward it, finds its expression in creative pieces that are unique fruits of the mental exercise that fuels his observations. “There is no denying that the velocity of an idea, especially good ones, has to be encrusted in paint or stone,” he said. “This is the essence of the work itself, that ideas can be conflated on a surface that is not of it but becomes it when executed properly.”
The genius of a well-sculpted piece, he said, resides therein.
As an artist known for welding together aesthetic sensibilities with pop-culture references, Miel offers a caveat, stressing that classical or pop culture appropriation must strengthen an idea. “I don’t put it there for the sake of it,” he said. “The appropriation is not an end in itself. It has to help tell a story. It can serve as a directional device in my narrative.” The device, Miel said, is used if an opportune time arises. He said, however, that in the absence of one, or if suddenly made aware of copyright concerns, he is more than happy to invent another form of aesthetic component to drive narrative forward, “We are, after all, artists.”