Creativity in Context by Lisa Ito

Exhibition Notes:

Creativity in Context
by Lisa Ito

"Creativity, it has been said, consists largely of re-arranging what we know
in order to find out what we do not know." --George Kneller

To celebrate creativity—its potentials, procedures, and processes—is to
celebrate and acknowledge the potency of our histories, traditions, and
struggles. To celebrate creativity is also to embrace the force of change,
in whatever manifestations and dimensions it may take, and see how this can
spur us onwards as individuals and as a whole.

A celebration of creativity necessarily considers context. For rarely does
creativity thrive in a conceptual vacuum; nor does always it occur
sporadically within self, without heed or reference to one's surrounding
history, society, and systems. Whether in affirmation or interrogation of
one's past, present, and plans for the future, creativity spurs the need for
change (in its various manifestations) and freedom from immobility,
stagnation, strangulation.

The wordplay of the exhibition's title, DIWAng, itself denotes the
liberating potential of the power to create.The Tagalog noun from which the
exhibition takes root diwa, when roughly translated, generally means thought
or a state of mind. Diwa—when attached to the correct linguistic
modifier--can also morph into the word magdiwang or pagdiriwang (to
celebrate/celebrati on). Yet the title (as a word, 'diwang' is almost never
used by itself, but always in reference to another) also hints at the
incompleteness of the act—both of thought and of celebration- -unless further
defined in relation to its contexts.

DIWAng features the works of seventeen acclaimed Philippine visual artists,
spanning a broad range of generations, styles, artistic media and
standpoints. Yet more than merely testify to the diversity and range of
talent, the exhibition aims to gather a selection of works testifying to a
rich tradition of highly-contextualiz ed and situated creativity on the part
of the Filipino artist.

Seen in this perspective, several of the works in DIWAng attest to the
potentials and needs for scientifically- driven creativity in the field of
agricultural productivity, such as the painting entitled Anihan (Harvest),
by Gene de Loyola, where fields go from green to gold in their bounty. Boy
Dominguez's works, entitled Karagdagan and Pitong Ritwal, may be seen in the
light of how inspiration and sources may be derived from the motifs,
traditions and knowledges of the country's national minorities, many of
whose ways of life are threatened by foreign and local incursions and
assaults.

In the exhibition, works such as that of Emmanuel Garibay take the viewer to
previously unexplored yet familiar worlds. For instance, the work Goddess by
Garibay, repositions a larger-than- life image of the female deity away from
her earthy paradise and sets her in what seems to be an industrial yet
ethereal setting, filled with geometric shapes and shadows. Masquerade of
Enlightenment, a hand-colored lithograph print by Benjie Torrado Cabrera,
lulls the viewer into an exquisite realm which is later on shattered by the
significations of the work's title.

Other works literally remind us of how present-day imagination can be
situated in historical realities and traditional iconography. For instance,
Brenda Fajardo fuses both religious references and historical symbols in the
Apocalypsis series. The series appropriates the image of the Four Horsemen
in the Biblical Book of Revelations, said to be allegories for Pestilence,
War, Famine, and Death, and recasts the four dreaded figures not as
harbingers of suffering and evil, but of hope and righteousness. For the
latter, Fajardo takes inspiration in both the historical archetypes of
Philippine revolutionaries and struggling women: the anti-colonial
Katipunero, the indigenous bagani warrior, the Filipina fighter. Noel Soler
Cuizon takes on deeply-personal issues of identity and situates these in
history and ethnicity in the work entitled Act of Contrition.

Other works in the exhibition focus on the creation of metaphors for nation.
For instance, the works Epilogo by Mark Justiniani and Sa Kagitingan, by
Karen Ocampo Flores present commentaries on the roles of historical figures
and hero/ines on contemporary conceptions of nationhood. Flores presents the
image of a mother giving birth, framed by the blood of fallen heroes and
stars who light the way. After a Lost Original, a collaborative painting by
Wire Tuazon and Tanke Reyes, appropriates the historical images of the
United States of Americas' Declaration of Independence from Britain in 1776,
and juxtaposes these with images associated or hinting at the subsequent
conquest of the Philippine islands: monkeys, a bulol figure, effigies from
the manunggul jar, a dog and apple. The work strongly indicts the logic of
colonialism, pointing at how one nation's liberation ironically ended up in
another's slavery.

DIWAng also exhibits a number of works that not only reflect the country's
histories of colonization, but also chart how the cultural systems and ways
of thinking brought about by these experiences have persisted up to now,
decades after the period of direct foreign rule. How The Carabao Learned
English by Don Salubayba is a witty yet nonetheless compelling critique of
the colonial imprint left on the collective mentality of a nation. The
carabao (water buffalo), a quintessential symbol for the ordinary Filipino,
and how it has its mind attached to that of its master. Mideo Cruz
constructs Superpower, a figure fashioned out of odds and ends that is also
clearly a reference to robots depicted in cartoons as “saviors of the
universe”. Cruz delivers a jab not only at the economic influx of imported
items (such as the cheap plastic toys used as components of the piece), but
also the importation of mentalities and frameworks that the foreign machine
facilitates.

Some of the other artists featured in the exhibition have contributed works
that depict contemporary social realities in the Philippines, attempting to
infuse new ways of seeing and documenting realities and everyday problems.
Social Realist stalwart Antipas Delotavo, for instance, subtly captures the
sense of isolation, disenfranchisement and alienation felt by many in a
country with a population of over 75 million people in his works Dambana and
Tansong Tala. Fragile, a diptych by Yko Umadhay, is a fitting tribute to the
present-day phenomenon of massive labor migration, the Overseas Foreign
Worker (OFW) boom that speaks of a fragile economy underneath the heavy
influx of remittances.

Creativity enables one to confront anew the realities that one often
ignores—or wishes to ignore. The pervasive issue of record-breaking poverty
levels and the rising economic disparities between the elite and the
downtrodden is eloquently alluded to in the work Elegy for the
Disenfranchised, by Iggy Rodriguez. The steel structures signifying supposed
development and progress are portrayed by Rodriguez as a skeletal frame, a
signifier of death to the downtrodden and dispossesed. Meanwhile, the issue
of extrajudicial killings of civilians and activists is alluded to and
articulated in works such as Prusisyon/Crucifixi on by Rene de Guzman and the
Left Over Project Series by Racquel de Loyola. De Guzman's dismembered clay
heads and De Loyola's soft sculptures hanging from the ceiling take on a
chilling signification when arranged in this particular manner, resonating
in their images the countless victims of extrajudicial killings, abductions,
and human rights violations of late.

As a whole, the works in DIWAng are generally rooted in realities,
histories, and social truths—far by among the best sources of material for
the creative mind.

diwang
Celebrating Creativity
10th year Anniversary Exhibition of the IP Philippines
June 22 - August 10, 2007

participating artists:

* Antipas Delotavo
* Benjie Torrado Cabrera
* Boy Dominguez
* Brenda Fajardo
* Don Salubayba
* Emmanuel Garibay
* Gene de Loyola
* Iggy Rodriguez
* Karen Ocampo Flores
* Mark Justiniani
* Mideo M Cruz
* Noel Cuizon
* Racquel de Loyola
* Rene de Guzman
* Tanke Reyes
* Wire Tuazon
* Yko Umadhay


curator: Mideo M Cruz