How to encapsulate a pivotal decade in our recent history? Recollection 1081: Clear and Present Danger (Visual Dissent on Martial Rule), the exhibit now on view at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, attempts to capture the climate of protest under Martial Law. Not an easy exercise given the broad timeline and the complex issues that marked that period, from 1972 to 1981.
Forty years ago this September, President Ferdinand Marcos issued Proclamation 1081, the declaration of Martial Law that marked the beginning of his one-man rule. This is an exhibit of mostly paintings and prints produced in reaction to the curtailment of political freedom under a dictatorship. The show does not claim to be all encompassing and complete. It barely skims the surface of work that remonstrated against the oppression of that era.
The pieces range across various periods, from the 1970s, the early Martial Law years, to the mid-1980s, circa the EDSA Revolution that toppled the Marcos government. Students of Philippine history know that these different spans of time fostered distinct modes of protest. You don’t get a sense of those variations in this show, though, nor does the viewer get a context from which the artists practiced. Did any of them work together, influence the other? The exhibit does not seem to delve very deeply or expound on those questions. There seems to be no demarcation between work done before or after the Aquino assassination, an important catalyst for the protest movement.
What the exhibit does give us are rarely seen choice works from private collections. I enjoyed viewing Jose Tence Ruiz’s political cartoons from the 1980s, from his own collection, and Benedicto Cabrera aka Bencab’s etchings from the 1970s, from the CCP’s collection. Also great to see: paintings by Charlie Co from the early 1980s, darker and more sinister than his work today, and Ang Kiukok’s series of works on paper, Scream I and II.
Both Tence Ruiz and Bencab also presented new work, the only two artists who did so. Bogie’s Revolution Evolution Pixelation is a digital print on tarpaulin with portraits of Martial Law’s two key figures: President Marcos in 1972 and his secretary of National Defense, Juan Ponce Enrile, in 2012, now the Senate President. Their images have been enlarged to a point that they appear so pixelated, you can only distinguish their forms from behind a camera’s lens.
Ben’s 21st Century Proclamation is a digital drawing based on an etching from the 1970s that carries a similar composition. The original centers on a soldier shown from behind, marching on to confront both government and political protesters. The later piece depicts the ordinary citizen, also from behind, marching under a profusion of yellow ribbons.
Elsewhere in the CCP: works from Rick Rocamora, an award-winning Filipino American photojournalist at the Pasilyo Vicente Manansala, the 2nd Floor corridor, and Tony Dezuñiga, the late Filipino comics book illustrator, creator of the Jonah Hex character, at the 4th floor’s Bulwagang Fernando Amorsolo.
Recollection 1081: Clear and Present Danger (Visual Dissent on Martial Rule) runs from 14 July to 30 September 2012 at the Bulwagang Juan Luna (Main Gallery) and Pasilyo Guillermo Tolentino, 3f, Cultural Center of the Philippines, CCP Complex, Roxas Blvd., Pasay City. Phone (632) 832-1125 to 39 or visit http://www.culturalcenter.gov.ph
i had plenty of benjie cabrera prints for sale….
I am interested. Do you have pictures?
Hi! where can I see the prints? Can you email me pls.?