The
National Gallery of Australia in Canberra presents an exhibition of new art
from the Philippines by Rodel Tapaya from 18 March to 20 August 2017.
Rodel Tapaya has been
exhibiting for over a decade and has established a literary-based visual
practice, unique in its Filipino perspective, and striking for its rich history
of Hispanic narrative painting. His cramped figurative compositions mixed with
political messaging evokes the work of the Mexican muralists and surrealists,
such as José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Frida
Kahlo. As such Tapaya brings together the social, political and environmental
issues of Filipino life.
Of the large triptych
The promise land: the moon, the sun, the stars, a newly commissioned
work for the National Gallery of Australia, Tapaya says, ‘In some way, I
realise that old stories are not just metaphors. I can find connections with
contemporary times. It’s like the myths are poetic narrations of the present.
Sometimes, the present events are so hard to grasp that they could be mistaken
as a myth, or folktale, just to enable people to cope’. Tapaya’s commission for
the NGA is a work of epic scale, presenting three separate, yet interconnected,
narratives across a ten-metre triptych.
‘My challenge to
myself is always … how to make a huge work complex in composition and detail,
yet with harmony and unity, inspired by stories of the past, true or not, from
myths, legends and current events’, he says.
His style is folk-narrative
with ‘old stories’ re-imagined and re-imaged. By drawing inspiration from
pre-colonial mythology and Filipino folkloric tradition, Tapaya pieces together
numerous pictorial fragments, fusing fantasy with reality. He explains, ‘I try
to weave them in one continuum, and hopefully people find the narrative by
their own journey through the maze. I also hope people see how challenging it
is to make a mural-like scale of work with complexities of content and
composition. It involves editing, emphasising and including subtleties in the
imagery, concepts and themes to enrich the interpretations.'
In the triptych The
promise land: the moon, the sun, the stars Tapaya re-imagines a creation
myth from the Moro-Isolan tribe in Mindanao. A great winged creature (Buwan),
whose face is divided by a crescent, stares out at the viewer, her
red-feathered form perched against the black night sky. A ferocious warrior
(Araw), holding his kalis (sword) aloft, is shrouded in the red and orange of a
burning flame. He appears to send a flickering and crackling heat in all
directions, while the stark white face of a Lumad (indigenous) figure, dressed
in traditional textiles of the Bagobo tribe, bleeds, spilling dark red blood
across the scene below.
The wooden installation is called Isang Kahig, Isang Tuka, which means One
Scratch One Peck (2010). The installation refers to a Tagalog myth from Bulacan
involving three kings: Rajah Manuk, Rajah Uwak, and Rajah Lawin. Fuelled by
greed for expanded territory, the three kings fight. Chaos ensures. The god
Bathala grew angry at the kings’ pettiness and punished them by turning them into
birds, condemning them forever to wander the land aimlessly, scratching the
soil and pecking for food.
The installation is 60 chickens of wood and fibreglass, set in a
militaristic formation, three rows wide, as they march to battle, representing
the absurdity of warfare.
MARTINA
NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and
the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
Comments
Post a Comment