Filipino painters explore cultural irony in an exhibit entitled “TRAIDOR!” at Esteban Sabar Gallery from May 3rd to May 31st, 2007. An artists’ reception takes place on Thursday, May 3rd from 6 to 9pm.
TRAIDOR!, an exhibition by four Filipino painters, England Hidalgo, Marcius Noceda, Carlo Ricafort and Mel Vera Cruz, that explores the irony of the struggle to present artwork about a history of exploitation while immersed in a commodified world. Lian Ladia, the curator, explains, “Traidor is a Tagalog word for traitor, and this exhibition explores the irony in the exploration of the relationship of art and commodity.”
The exhibition gets beneath the surfaces to discover material processes that would betray the seductive world of objects, similar to Theodore Adorno’s concept of negative dialectics, a solution to a mindless consumption dominated by society.
The four Filipino artists work in the Bay Area and focus on postmodern and political art. Their most recent show was at Somarts in San Francisco called Overmapped with significant artists like Carlos Villa and Robert Guitterez. The progressive group has been invited to exhibit their works at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila in 2009.
I will be writing a foreword for these folks (for other, future exhibits, and for possible publication), and am very much looking forward to being able to participate in this work, for numerous reasons of cross-pollination between art forms, given similar political stances between these visual artists and myself. In terms of whether the greater Filipino American "community," those who inhabit the Filipino American mainstream and its popular culture, want this, too fuckin bad because here it is. These artists are relentless and rabid in mining the irony and hypocrisy embedded in our Filipino and Filipino American selves. And they are equally as relentless and rabid in pointedly examining the ugliest of Western imposition and influence upon Filipinos historically and into contemporary times.
So this, I think, is very much in line with my own work, and concerns. But again, whether or not the greater Filipino American community, above and beyond our art scenes, want these images and ideas behind such volatile images representing them, I believe this is why it it important to me to be directly involved in cultural production. That is, actively producing visible, concrete product. I believe that discussion occurs or arises subsequent to the community's encountering the product/work of art, just as discussion, however knee-jerk reactionary and anti-intellectual, however ill-worded and uncivilized, followed the Bebot video and the open letter. The open letter is also a concrete cultural production by community members. The community can choose to ignore the art and the cultural productions, and they may choose to ignore the artists and creators. But the fact of the matter is that the work of art exists in the world, visible to all.
Now, the decision is ours, as the creators of concrete cultural productions, whether or not to succumb to mainstream and profit determining standards and demands. But then I have to ask what gimmicks and tropes are utilized in order to ensure profit. And profit for whom?
Not Inoffensive #2. I barreled through Linh Dinh's Borderless Bodies yesterday evening. I am understanding more and more what it is that makes Linh (yeah, we are on a first name basis these days) so good at what he does. It's that taboos appear to not serve as a barrier to the writing and crafting of the poem. Whereas our internal social decorum self-editor typically kicks in and tells us, "yo, that is so terribly, terribly wrong..." Linh responds to that internal social decorum self-editor not by shutting it off, but rather, by listening acutely to it, and constructing his wording with much care to point out precisely the absurdity of the social construction of the self-editor's gauge. In Borderless Bodies, he discusses in painstaking detail the many ways in which human bodies are displayed and consumed as meat. He takes an eraser to the line between actions we perform upon one another's bodies in sexual desire, in nurturing, in objectifying and harming, damaging. He points out the arbitrariness of "proper" social conventions such as handshakes and eye contact. These are just a few of my preliminary thoughts, and I will stop here for now, since the book is not sitting here in front of me to go into specifics, but I think this is the gist of the project, an examining and exploding of so many body metaphors, and whose bodies are used in these metaphors. Body as nation, nation state, barbwire fenced landmass. Body's breachable borders. Body that can be parceled, purchased, hustled and pushed, trafficked and auctioned. Body as tool, as appliance, as furniture, as desecrated altar. And once again, body as meat. Straight up cut into bloody chunks, stewed, and served on a plate meat.
Not Inoffensive #3. Referencing the above, and thinking of the Bob Marley song we heard on the radio this morning. "Is This Love," not written to his own wife but to someone extramarital. "Is This Love" interpreted by many faithful followers as a song of nationalism (compare to the Filipino tradition of kundiman), hence his "love" as his nation, Jamaica, and this nationalism thus effectively affirming a male rockstar's right and entitlement to marital infidelity. I am starting to believe more and more strongly that nationalism is masculinist, especially given woman body as metaphor for nation, for land. I write in Achiote Seeds that for our charismatic male nationalists to perceive of, to compose art utilizing the metaphor of woman body as nation, as Inang Bayan, they are complicit also in this woman body being so breached and violated, so parceled and purchased, so hustled and pushed.
Just some of my thoughts. In the meantime, for those of you out of towners who have asked us about the recent freeway meltdown so close to our home, really the only inconvenience to us is the virtually non-stop, 24-7 helicopter presence in our airspace since early Sunday morning. Sounds like fuckin Apocalypse Now. Blades beating air. Incessant blades beating air.
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