Kiri Dalena, "Washed Out", video still and installation view
Trust Kiri Dalena to bring recent history home to us without resorting to horrific images of tragedy and destruction, but by making us feel the power of the river at the heart of a natural calamity. Continue reading
Julie Lluch, "Aba's Yellow Christ", terracotta and acrylic
Being with family means having the freedom to relax, get goofy, be yourself. It implies the comfort to do as one pleases. Where else would Kiri Dalena, artist and activist who takes us to the scenes of massacre and murder, show her irreverent side other than with her family? Or will her sister Sari share a self-portrait that unabashedly glories in her protruding pregnant belly? Home Works, at the AFM Total Gallery, captures the
Julie Lluch, "Cat", terracotta and acrylic
casual, humorous, and playful atmosphere of a family get together. The group exhibit presents works by the celebrated sculptor, Julie Lluch, and her three equally-talented daughters.
Aba Lluch Dalena, "Buhay Aso", terracotta and acrylic
Julie brings out intimate pieces, clay and marble renditions of domestic animals and decorative objects that one encounters within the sphere of one’s home. As we enter the main exhibit area, her sculpture of a startled cat greets us. Produced in what has now been recognized as a Julie Lluch trademark, she depicts the animal with its hackles raised, its teeth bared, half snarling, half surprised. The cat’s comical expression in the many versions of this piece never fails to get a laugh out of me.
Julie Lluch, "Crucifix After Aba", terracotta and acrylic
Nearby, as a counterpoint to Cat, we see the first of Aba Lluch Dalena’s works: two dogs joined together, caught in flagrante, seemingly oblivious to the humans in their vicinity—just as they would be in real life. Three versions of a crucifix adorn one of the gallery’s walls. Aba’s Yellow Christ is the only one of the three where Julie completes the details of Christ’s head and face. While I have seen several of Julie’s crucifixes, I have not seen any of these particular ones before.
Aba’s sculpture has been set amongst her mother’s work.
Aba Lluch Dalena, "Home Works 2 (Daddy in Pakil, Laguna)", terracotta and acrylic
Along with Askal, another stray pup, and Palaka, a giant green toad, she created four miniature tableaux full of wonderful detail.
Home Works 2 (Daddy in Pakil, Laguna) shows their father at work, the great Danny Dalena seated before a canvas. It includes a small facade of Pakil’s famous cathedral, echoing
Aba Lluch Dalena, "Home Works 1 (Mommy and her Cacti Heart Sculptures)", terracotta and acrylic
the actual view from the Dalena ancestral home. Home Works 1(Mommy and Her Cacti Heart Sculptures) is my favorite. It depicts Julie amidst many of her most recognizable work: the busts of Van Gogh and Gauguin, spiky cacti, her clay hearts. Both pieces include playful dogs wiggling on the floor.
Kiri Dalena, "Five Words To Read Aloud (After Daddy)", neon
I thought Kiri’s work the most surprising of all. Her pieces in this show depart completely from the socio-political commentaries we have come to associate with her. She cast three larger than life blown up condoms in resin, painted in baby pink, black, and white. The three have been placed before a neon sign with the
Kiri Dalena, "White Condom (After Daddy)", resin and automotive paint
words teeth, thing, mall, lamb, bought. If we do as the title suggests, Five Words To Be Read Aloud (After Daddy), we realize why her condoms have such odd shapes!
Exhibit installation of Kiri's work
Beside the condoms, Kiri’s Penis Line (After Mommy) forms a single procession along the entire length of the wall. Dozens of thumb-sized terracotta penises appear to wiggle, bow, or stand in attention. One can choose to acquire them singly or in groups. Take your pick!
Two self-portraits complete the show. One of them is of Julie, an acrylic painting from 1972. In contrast, Sari represents herself in video, a piece for the 21st century.
Kiri Dalena, "Penis Line (After Mommy)", detail
Home Works runs from 5 to 28 October 2010 at the AFM Total Gallery, Alliance Francaise de Manille, 209 Nicanor Garcia St., (Formerly Reposo St.), Bel Air 2, Makati. Phone (632) 897-7757 or visit http://www.alliance.ph
Kiri Dalena, "Penis Line (After Mommy)", terracotta and acrylic
Julie Lluch, "Self Portrait", acrylic on canvas, 1972
Sari Lluch Dalena, "Self Portrait", video loop
Aba Lluch Dalena, "Askal", terracotta and acrylic
Just like everybody else in the audience, I eagerly awaited the announcement of winners for this year’s Ateneo Art Awards. The
Shattering States: The Ateneo Art Awards 2010 Winners: Pow Martinez, Leslie de Chavez, and Mark Salvatus
Ateneo Art Gallery staff kept the final results under tight guard, even to us jurors. Thankfully, they paced this year’s awards night programme so that none of us had long to wait. Continue reading
Leeroy New, "Balete"
Sometimes only a Pinoy word will do to convey an incredible experience. Find time to pass by the Ateneo Art Gallery’s newly-
Another detail, "Balete"
expanded space (they’ve completely taken over the old Rizal Library), and see if you don’t agree with me. How else can you describe
Detail, Leeroy New, "Balete"
Leeroy New’s installation other than galing? Because it is. So galing! Conceptualized with thinking that goes beyond awesome, and put together by the creative use of simple materials that goes beyond super, you really just have to say
Leeroy New next to his Balete tree
“Ang Galing!”
In Balete, Leeroy wraps the posts of the gallery’s facade with his version of a Balete tree, one constructed from cable lines , flexible tubing used for electric conduits. Accented by plastic cable ties, the tree twists and turns between the building’s columns, simulating the gnarling, gigantic roots of an actual Balete. Also known as the Banyan in Southeast Asia, the Balete possesses a mystical reputation. It guards sacred spaces, monasteries and old churches. Leeroy comments that the orange cables remind him of the saffron robes used by Buddhist monks.
Detail, "Balete"
In the Philippines, we know the Balete as the dwelling place of extra-terrestrials and enchanted spirits. Leeroy worked with graphic designer Dan Matutina for projections that mimic the enchantments bestowed by legend on a Balete. Come by during the evenings of the exhibit’s run and catch the apparitions suggested by the light patterns. You may even see a wisp of the legendary White Lady crossing the tree’s intermingling branches.
Another view of Balete
Simultaneous to Leeroy’s installation, Kiri Dalena mounts Watch History Repeat Itself inside the gallery’s space for contemporary exhibits. Kiri continues her documentation of protest slogans that began with Keeping the Faith, the piece that won the 2009 Ateneo Art Awards. Earlier this year, she carried on this exercise in The Present Disorder Is The Order Of The Future (for which she got into the shortlist of this year’s awards) by using marble slabs as the medium to memorialize these slogans and placard texts. For this current exhibit, she shifts to another medium—neon lights. The idea of recording text in neon came to her after an evening spent with
Kiri Dalena's Yellow Book of Slogans
Caucasian colleagues in the red light district of Mabini. Subjected to the indignities that inevitably fall on a young Filipina seen in the company of foreigners, the experience sparked her militant streak, leading to an “aha” moment among the flashing signs. In her exhibit, she recreates the tag Liar Liar in neon, appropriated from the Jim Carrey movie by rally participants of a 2004 protest action after the Hello Garci scandal. Kiri also compiles her collected texts in her Yellow Book Of Slogans. Playing on one wall is video clip borrowed from ABS-CBN News. It shows a student protest at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. The film catches school chairs being hurled from inside the campus, forming a mound of chairs that echo the detritus left from student protests during the Martial Law era. A sure sign that some things never change.
Neon bright: Liar Liar
Both Leeroy and Kiri return to the gallery for homecoming exhibits after their 2009 Ateneo Art Awards residency grants. Leeroy spent time in Sydney, at the La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre while Kiri went to Bandung, Indonesia, to the Common Room Networks Foundation.
History in neon
Balete runs from 14 July to 30 October 2010.
Watch History Repeat Itself runs from 14 July to 16 August 2010.
Both shows are at the Ateneo Art Gallery, Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. Phone (632)426-6488 or visit http://www.gallery.ateneo.edu
Video still from installation of "Watch History Repeat Itself"
"Dear Activist Write A Slogan For Me"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaXJWOCRiPU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4nPJfE97mQ
Events seem to conspire to continue weaving a thread through Kiri Dalena’s works. In her piece for the show Keeping The Faith, exhibited at the Lopez Museum in late 2008, and for which she won the 2009 Ateneo Art Awards, she recreated a student uprising of the early 1970s. At the foot of a barricade made from school desks, she displayed two figures lying curled up on their sides, their arms shielding their heads to protect themselves. This work was Kiri’s response to the voluminous material in the museum’s collection documenting the disappearances of activists during Martial Law. She cast the two figures in unfired clay, and by the end of the show’s run, they had disintegrated into disjointed parts; just two more nameless victims of political violence. 
In October 2009, Kiri resurrected these two figures for the Sungduan exhibit at the National Museum. For Found Figures In Stones Translated by Pakil Carvers, she sought out wood carvers from her family’s Laguna hometown. They recreated her cowering forms from the original clay remains. The parts come together like a Lego toy, mimicking the displaced state that they had been “found” after the Lopez Museum show.
This month, Kiri revives these figures once more.
The Present Disorder Is The Order of the Future, Kiri’s current show at MOs Space in Bonifacio High Street, gives us a haunting multi-media commentary on the state of the nation. Also an activist and a noted documentary filmmaker, she addresses atrocities, acts of injustice, and political issues that have continued to plague us through various regime changes.
On the gallery’s far wall, Kiri mounts 24 marble slabs. She lines them up in a grid, like lapidas in an ossuary. Each slab is engraved with documented protest slogans and placard texts that she has encountered in the course of her political involvement. They range from the humorously frustrated (Patay Na Kami Wala Pang Nangyayari) to the scathing (Once A Tuta Always A Tuta).
On the gallery’s concrete floor, Kiri scatters the dismembered chunks of her two figures, the wooden bits from her Sungduan piece and newly-cast replicas in marble. Projected from above are outtakes from two of her documentaries, one on the Ampatuan Massacre and another on the violent dispersion of informal settlers. The films emit eerie, kinetic shadows on the scattered fragments, and provides the show’s sole source of light.
Kiri does not seem to refer to any particular incident in this piece. But with body parts strewn across the floor, the horrific massacre of 57 people in Maguindanao does come to mind. Or the detritus of a site suddenly evicted of its residents. That she does not point to any specific event actually makes her message more sobering. Nefariousness has become so commonplace that we can attach it as a tag to any number of occurences. And this being an election year, a presidential election that already seems full of controversies, it seems almost a certainty that Kiri’s figures, in some form or another, will turn up again.
The Present Disorder Is The Order Of The Future runs from 30 January to 7 March 2010 at MOs Space, 3F MOs Design Building, B2 Bonifacio High Street, Taguig City. Phone (632) 856-2748 or visit http://www.mo-space.net
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChrQp-rRiHs
View of Sungdu-an Installation
While other countries regularly mount their biennials or triennials, our Sungdu-an is the closest thing we have to a nationally
Christine Sicangco, "Thou Son's Cranes"
organized visual arts event. Continue reading
Ateneo Art Awards Short-listed Artists with Fr. Nebres of the Ateneo, Richie Lerma of the Ateneo Art Gallery, judges, and sponsors (photo from Rani Jalandoni)
Michelline Syuco with a piece from "Armadillon"
Well, I got two of the three winners right, and the third I actually picked as a runner-up, so I guess I didn’t do too badly in predicting this year’s recipients of the Ateneo Art Awards. I had a feeling the two-dimensional pieces would be passed over, no matter how excellently-made. All in all, the quality of the short-listed artists only bodes well for the future of Philippine art. I am proud to say I saw all but two of the shows in situ. It was great to relive them at the Ateneo Art Gallery’s display at Shangri-La Plaza Mall. Of course the experience does not come close to actually viewing the shows (where was Patty’s lace piano?), but still, you do get a feel for the sensibilities of each of the artists. How exhilarating to witness the diversity!
Detail from Michelline Syjuco's "Armadillon", shown at Mag:net
Raul Manzano, Editor-In-Chief of Metro Society, one of the night's sponsors