Words by Arizia Palomar

Photo by Clefvan Pornela, Courtesy of Ateneo Art Gallery

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Gongs. Blood. Smoke. Earth. invites us to immerse ourselves into the world of Baguio art. 

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Along the dark walls of the gallery, viewers witness the overwhelmingly colorful curation of works from Northern Luzon, packed with patterns and motifs. Co-curator and visual artist Kawayan de Guia shares that Gongs. Blood. Smoke. Earth. is the first Baguio arts show in Manila. The exhibition aims to give viewers a holistic view of the Baguio art scene from the formation of the Baguio Arts Guild in 1986 to the present, serving also as an extension of the book Tiw-tiwong: an Uncyclopedia to Life, Living, and Art, in Baguio, the Cordilleras and Beyond. The book and exhibit explore the relationships of ‘schooled’ and ‘unschooled’ artists with indigenous communities. Moreover, the exhibition title highlights the Cordilleran ritual of Kanyaw, with its purpose to communicate and pay homage to the spirits—to bridge together the physical and the spiritual.

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The overarching theme of the exhibit emphasizes the concept of “indio-genius,” a term that National Artist Kidlat Tahimik has championed in his works to highlight the knowledge, resilience, and power of the Filipino. The exhibition, co-presented by the Victor Oteyza Community Art Space (VOCAS) Foundation and Baguio Kunst Book Publishing, features the works of prominent artists in Baguio to illustrate the history and the aesthetics of the Baguio art scene. De Guia and Ateneo Art Gallery’s Director and Chief Curator Victoria “Boots” Herrera note in a press preview that “[this exhibit] isn’t a retrospective, it’s more of a survey.” De Guia even describes it as a map to attempt to “encapsulate each artists’ practice that really defined artmaking.”

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Sharing a space

Upon entering the third floor of the Ateneo Art Gallery, viewers are greeted by National Artist BenCab’s sketch of the Baguio Arts Guild, capturing the likeness of some of the artists’ featured in the exhibit through portraiture. Below is one of the black dog sculptures of Dehon Taguyungon, represented as the highest form of animal sacrifice used to heal communities from disasters. The sculptures are scattered around the exhibition, either sleeping, playing, or feeding their young, and in static, dynamic, or abstracted forms. They serve as markers in the space that aid in portraying continuity and repetition, just as a ritual would.

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Various spots around the exhibition also reference motifs, patterns, and tradition in Baguio. In this way, a cohesion and dialogue happens between each work. A common motif to note is Dap-ay. In the Cordilleras, Dap-ay is a central meeting place where social interaction occurs, whether it be for ceremonies, events, or rest. It symbolizes and hints towards a gesture of passing down information from the elders to the youth.

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Tahimik’s Dap-ay Trilogy of Indio-genius Stories and the prints by Tommy Hafalla act as a formal introduction to the themes and aesthetics of the show. They build a strong impression of Baguio arts and culture through the use of the imagined and the actual to assert heritage, identity, and the goal of the exhibition. Tahimik’s trilogy and works often transform historical consciousness and frame it in a manner that uplifts indigenous identity. Meanwhile, Hafalla’s photographs, in their pristine photo quality, reveal an unfiltered look into the people of the Cordilleras as they gaze into the camera, as if viewers are being spectated by the subjects.

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Moreover, de Guia’s Dap-ay: Reflected Dialogues (A Baguio Unarchive) is settled in the center of the exhibition. It replicates Dap-ay and its process of passing down culture and tradition, utilizing paper mache to reimagine the stones of the Dap-ay by using pages from Tiw-tiwong to construct it. The piece even includes the book for viewers to peruse.

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Dap-ay is embedded in Cordilleran culture in the realms of the social, the political, and the religious. The works portray a reiteration of that communal space to converse, to storytell, to remember history, and to uphold traditions.

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Indigenous history, Indio-genius craft

The exhibition is unafraid in addressing Philippine colonial history critically and unapologetic in flaunting Baguio arts of the past and present. Just behind Tahimik’s Dap-ay Trilogy is Kidlat de Guia’s Banig ng Lahing IndioGenius: Bagami ng Calamba/Cordillera, which makes use of paper collage to weave together indigenous imagery with notable Ilustrados to asks viewers to reconnect with their indigenous roots.

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Leonard Aguinaldo’s This Appearing Lands series and Santiago Bose’s Free Trade are placed in front of one another. Bold in its confrontation of colonization, the works center on the displacement of indigenous peoples from their homes. It is attention-grabbing given the scale and elements within the works, such that the two juxtapose colonial iconography with indigenous imagery, hence narrating a disappearance and reappearance of Filipino identity. However, their defiance against colonialism is firm when it recognizes the deterioration of their culture due to it.

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The concept of their home as a sacred place is then highlighted in Willy Magtibay’s Dalikan. The title references the “kitchen” or the stove in the homes of Indigenous people in the Cordilleras as a place of refuge and solace, and Magtibay protects the Dalikan by installing bul-ul statues on every corner of the work.

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The artists’ insistence to protect what is theirs by featuring their culture cannot be ignored due to their striking, stimulating visual metaphors. Even after centuries of colonization and globalization, they do not falter—they continue to stay grounded on the rich tradition that the landscape possesses.

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A haven for artists

While many artworks address colonization, indigenous identity, and advocacies through visual art, they simultaneously exude a tenderness in how the featured artists honor people who were instrumental to their culture and communities. Despite the prolificness of the works and the exhibition, there is a warmth that radiates from the works because one could recognize that these reflect the artists’ personal encounters with Baguio.

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Randy Gawwi’s Gulgulait reflects his life in the mines through charging his painting materials with gold, burning the painting, and extracting the gold. He repeats this gesture in his work to pay tribute to his grandmother. Co-curator Nona Garcia’s intricately painted works Building Mountains and Fool’s Gold critiques the change of landscape in the Cordilleras, where the mountains are instead filled with gravel and sand, which describes her own experience living in the mountain.

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Viewers are also encouraged to engage; Gail Vicente’s Mother the Earth is a recreation of the late Roberto Villanueva’s last artwork called Earth Song. Because of Villanueva’s practice of an ‘artist ephemeral,’ none of his past works were retrieved for the exhibition as they have all been destroyed. As such, Vicente calls for viewers to contribute their handkerchiefs to bring a new life to the piece. As a mother herself, not only is she honoring other mothers, but also the life and work of Villanueva.

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Despite its rich history and an ever-evolving landscape, Baguio has continued to be a place for artistic freedom and collaboration. The diverse set of medium and context and the nature of works like Earth Song and de Guia’s dap-ay recreation allow viewers to reimagine what the place was like for the artists. And it isn’t just about them, but the people of the Cordilleras and now, viewers of the exhibition. It brings an inherent sense of company, cohesion, and solidarity.

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Asserting identity

In each of the artist’s meaning-making, visual language, and metaphors, they simultaneously interact with the aspects of Baguio as a haven for artists and its cultural influence on local arts. From visitor artists to ghost artists, each of their contexts interacts to portray a mosaic of identities of Baguio.

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Beyond the exhibition’s goal, what it also accomplishes is an assertion of the artists’ identities in a space where indigenous arts and culture has yet to thrive in hopes to bridge it with people in Manila. While focused on Baguio’s art scene, it speaks of Philippine identity and history and contains concepts of family, history, home, and community that Filipinos care about. Through linking the mountain and the city, the artists invite viewers to honor the arts, culture, and indigenous people of the Philippines.

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The exhibition asks us to look deeper into Filipino identity and our origins. It is a ritual to begin again and again and again—like a gong’s sound bouncing around the walls of the gallery, resonating through the mind, the body, and the spirit.

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Guests visiting the exhibition throughout its run are encouraged to contribute handkerchiefs to Earth Song by Roberto Villanueva, which will be recreated by Gail Vicente.

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Arizia Palomar is an incoming AB Psychology junior and the 73rd Editor-in-Chief of HEIGHTS Ateneo. Although she is a visual artist whose specialty is mixed media and soft sculpture, she tries to write about the things that matter the most to her.