Oca Villamiel in the Valley of the Dolls

What would you get if you crossed some Anselm Kiefer and a dose of Joseph Cornell with Chucky from Child’s Play, the 80s slasher flick? Probably something bordering on the incredible spectacle created by Oca Villamiel at Light And Space Contemporary. Oca wanted to recreate the experience of the Payatas dumpsite in this solo show he calls Stories Of Our Time. He immersed himself with the residents of the infamous landfill, an enormous tract of land in Quezon City, north of Metro Manila, sharing in the daily drudgery of those who call it home.

For two years, Oca collected discarded dolls from Payatas, purchasing them by the kilo. His stash, which numbered thousands, has been transformed into pieces that he has now spread out over three of the gallery’s exhibit spaces.

Oca’s show begins in the ground floor of the main building. Dozens of Barbie dolls blackened with soot hang upside down, trussed and suspended from the gallery’s ceiling. They seem like prey caught in a giant web, or victims ready for sacrifice in a voodoo ritual.

Things get even more interesting up in the third floor. Oca has used this space to showcase several assemblages enclosed within glass and steel vitrines of varied sizes. Each box has been deliberately made to look aged and decrepit, the better to fit the creepy creations they house. His dolls, arranged with found objects, star in spectral tableaux. An overall sense of decay emanates from the eerie, somewhat bloody, scenes arranged within

The two biggest works are the most visually arresting. A long, low receptacle houses a collection of ceramic bowls packed tightly together. The bowls contain a mishmash of body parts, remnants of the collected toys. On the wall beside, shelves as high as the ceiling have been filled with rows upon rows of dolls heads. They look out to the viewer from behind rusted chicken wire, a grisly display.

The show’s finale can be found inside one of the separate structures in the rear of the gallery complex. An installation that used up the rest of Oca’s accumulated dolls, one that took about a month to complete, fills the entire warehouse. He reproduced a wooden shanty, true to size, to stand at the center of the space. A thicket of dolls’ heads impaled on sticks of bamboo completely surround it. One is meant to traverse this dense and grim overgrowth to get to the shack. More dolls have been piled inside; they completely blanket the walls. What he couldn’t fit, he used as cover for the tall wall behind the shanty.

The pieces deliver a sense of the macabre more than they induce horror at the poverty found in the lives of Payatas dwellers. That doesn’t make the exhibit any less fascinating, however. Nor does it reduce the amazement at the amount of work involved to pull the exhibit off.

Oca, now 58, has decided to return to art making after a 30-year hiatus. He first studied painting under abstractionist FB Concepcion, renowned teacher of celebrated artists Lao Lianben and Gus Albor. After successfully steering his family’s garment business, he wanted to rediscover his initial inclinations. As he proves in Stories Of Our Time, it is never too late to dream big.

Oca Villamiel Stories Of Our Time runs from 11 February to 25 March 2012 at Light And Space Contemporary, 53 Fairlane St., West Fairview, Quezon City. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/Lightandspace