By Lissa Romero de Guia
ON the night before the opening of Kidlat Tahimik’s epic art installation at the Palacio de Cristal in El Retiro Park in Madrid, a beautiful soul named Citadel Cruz (wife of the Philippine Consul General Adrian Cruz) did a sound bath inside the palacio. Before she began the ritual, she showed us a photograph she had taken of Kidlat Tahimik, lifting the cloth that had been covering his son Kawayan’s painting. In the photograph, a shaft of light comes through the palacio’s glass ceiling, shining upon Kidlat’s head and the corner of painting he is about to reveal. Much in the same way that the National Artist for Cinema’s work aims to lift a veil from our eyes in order to reveal other truths and narratives about our colonial past and identity as Filipinos, Citadel said that the sound bath may open up wounds in us that needed healing. She encouraged us not to resist, to just let it be and allow the vibrations to wash through us, to bring healing where it was needed.
Indeed, a long overdue ancestral healing was in order. The Palacio de Cristal was originally built for the 1887 General Exposition on the Philippine Islands. The idea was to educate the Spanish about their colonial empire, and perhaps to justify the need to “civilize” the Filipinos. Aside from bringing in plants and animals endemic to the Philippine Islands, 43 Igorots were brought over, paid to depict everyday life in the makeshift village recreated around the palacio. Jose Rizal, who was a medical student in Madrid at the time, denounced the affair as a “human zoo”.
The beauty of sound is that it reaches where words and reason fail us. Sound permeates air, flesh and bone. And when the frequency is just right, it dissolves matter, releasing darkness and light. After three weeks of assembling three 40-foot containers worth of materials that had journeyed on cargo ships from the Philippines to Spain, the sound bath was a welcome ritual for tying together energetic loose ends.
Magellan, Marilyn, Mickey and Padre Dámaso, 500 Years of Conquistador Rock Stars, sponsored by the Reina Sofia Museum, is a continuum of Kidlat Tahimik’s consistent yet evolving message on decolonization and the importance of indigenous wisdom. But, just as Citadel brought healing through sound, Kidlat’s sariling dwende brings in a playful breath of fresh air, creating a space for open discourse between historical truths, local stories and the artist’s own punto de vista. Finally, another history would be told, not with the voice of the colonizer, but through the empowered voice of the former colonial subject.
At the opening of the exhibit, Kidlat toured the press through the sculptural narratives whose individual pieces were created by a community of artists, six of whom came with him to assemble the show at the Palacio de Cristal – Ifugao woodcarvers Santos Bayucca, Christopher Atiwon, Randy Bulayo and Jason Taguyungun, and master carpenters Jun Ritumalta and Michael Palomar.
The first scene to the right of the Palacio is Kidlat Tahimik’s depiction of Magellan’s “rediscovery” of the Philippines. A replica of a galleon ship reaches towards the palacio’s high glass ceilings, and Magellan is on the boat’s prow, together with his slave Enrique de Malacca. Kidlat references the writings of Antonio Pigafetta, the Italian explorer and scholar, whom Kidlat claims wrote an account of how the slave could speak and understand Visaya when they reached Cebu. The slave, who had been purchased in the Malaccas on a previous journey, brought to Europe, then traveled with Magellan on his big Westward journey before landing in the island of Cebu in 1521, and may very well have been the first person to circumnavigate the globe.
Through the ship’s portholes, one sees the whimsical yet empathetic figures handcrafted by Katrin de Guia, wife of Kidlat Tahimik. Made of found objects gathered by the sea, dried bones, beads, and other discarded objects, these figures point to the innate creativity of the soul that allows human beings to make something out of nothing. The objects represent what Ikeng may have been doing onboard during the long months it took to travel between Europe and the Spice Islands.
Part of this narrative is a scene showing the fall of Ferdinand Magellan. In Kidlat Tahimik’s naughty, female empowered version, Princess Bulakna, Lapu-Lapu’s wife, discovered the vulnerable spot in the battle armor. When the Portuguese explorer needed to relieve himself, the princess’ arnis stick found the bull’s eye. Talk about catching him with his pants down!
On the left side of the palacio, several scenes speak of the need to champion indigenous culture and local stories against the pervasive Hollywood-style narratives. Two arches literally represent the two opposing narrative arcs—one carved with the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe holding down her skirt against the subway updraft, the other arch carved in the likeness of the Ifugao goddess of the wind, Inhabian. These two arches do not meet, yet it appears that it is Inhabian’s wind, and not New York’s subway train, that blows Marilyn’s skirt upward, keeping the Hollywood narrative at bay.
Behind the arches, the Trojan horse of imperialist culture is seen being opposed by a tsunami of bulols (carved by children of Uha, Ifugao) representing the guardians of indigenous and local culture. Bombs carrying carved statues of Spiderman and Mickey Mouse fly mid-air, only to be met by wind gods carved out of tree roots, blowing them away.
In the center of the space is a rattan-woven spoof of the General Exposition of 1887, which Kidlat Tahimik renamed the “MadExpo” (all the rattan figures were made by blind weaver Rogelio Ginanoy). Underneath is a neon sign saying “Nuevas Filipinos Civilizados”, referring to the other part of the 1887 exhibit that showed “civilized” Filipinos in modern dress. On its right is a carved figure of Jose Rizal in his overcoat, wearing a bahag to show his connection with his roots. A wolf dressed in a monk’s cassock represents Padre Dámaso, who in Rizal’s novel Noli Me Tangere embodied the corruption and abuse of the Spanish clergy in colonial Philippines.
Behind the MadExpo are three works by Kidlat Tahimik’s three sons, speaking of the ways in which Filipinos had been “civilized”. On the left is Kawayan de Guia’s homage to Spoliarium, the painting by Juan Luna which won the gold medal at the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1884 in Madrid, the first gold medal awarded to a Filipino. In Kawayan’s version, the death of the gladiator becomes the death of Magellan at the hands of the natives.
On the right are the blown up prints of three woven photographs by Kidlat de Guia, representing the Sciences as embodied by Jose Rizal as an ophthalmologist. In the leftmost photograph, a portrait of Jose Rizal and other illustrados is interwoven with a portrait of the Igorots in the 1887 Exposition, showing the prevailing ideas at the time of what it meant to be civilized. In the central image, a photograph of Jose Rizal operating on the eyes of his mother is interwoven with an anting-anting or the All Seeing Eye, representing the strong spirituality of the Filipino. The rightmost work weaves a portrait of Rizal with that of the late Ifugao elder, Lopes Nauyac, whom Kidlat Tahimik considered a close friend and longtime mentor. This work infers that behind the European clothes and ways, Rizal was very much connected to his indigenous self.
Kabunyan’s mosaic work in the center is a map of the Philippines. Above it is the word Indio-Genius, a term accidentally coined by Lopes Nauyac, who had difficulty saying “indigenous” and said “indio-genius” instead. It was a cosmic slip of the tongue that Kidlat Tahimik latched on to in order to communicate the crux of his belief – that the wisdom of the indigenous is closer to the truth than our rational, modern way of seeing things.
Behind the MadExpo are three works by Kidlat Tahimik’s three sons, speaking of the ways in which Filipinos had been “civilized”. On the left is Kawayan de Guia’s homage to Spoliarium, the painting by Juan Luna which won the gold medal at the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1884 in Madrid, the first gold medal awarded to a Filipino. In Kawayan’s version, the death of the gladiator becomes the death of Magellan at the hands of the natives.
On the right are the blown up prints of three woven photographs by Kidlat de Guia, representing the Sciences as embodied by Jose Rizal as an ophthalmologist. In the leftmost photograph, a portrait of Jose Rizal and other illustrados is interwoven with a portrait of the Igorots in the 1887 Exposition, showing the prevailing ideas at the time of what it meant to be civilized. In the central image, a photograph of Jose Rizal operating on the eyes of his mother is interwoven with an anting-anting or the All Seeing Eye, representing the strong spirituality of the Filipino. The rightmost work weaves a portrait of Rizal with that of the late Ifugao elder, Lopes Nauyac, whom Kidlat Tahimik considered a close friend and longtime mentor. This work infers that behind the European clothes and ways, Rizal was very much connected to his indigenous self.
Kabunyan’s mosaic work in the center is a map of the Philippines. Above it is the word Indio-Genius, a term accidentally coined by Lopes Nauyac, who had difficulty saying “indigenous” and said “indio-genius” instead. It was a cosmic slip of the tongue that Kidlat Tahimik latched on to in order to communicate the crux of his belief – that the wisdom of the indigenous is closer to the truth than our rational, modern way of seeing things.
This wonderfully textured, colorful, and multilayered exhibit is a feast for the senses and meaningful in so many ways. It allows the present to connect with the past, leaving space for questions and dialogue, encouraging viewers to weave their own personal experiences with historical fact and the fluid present.
Underneath the woven, flying dap-ay in the sky, the gods looking down at us, we ended the exhibit opening with dancing. The Ifugao members of the six-man Filipino crew took up the gongs and we followed the Madrid-based Igorotas as they danced to the rhythm. As one dance followed another, I began to sense a feeling of euphoria in the group. One gong-player in particular, Randy, looked transcendent. Was he taken over by spirit? Was it the presence of the ancestors among us? As I followed the gongs and the dancing, I allowed the energy to move through me, until I too was no longer myself, for I was taking part in a much greater dance.
Photos by Kidlat de Guia
