TUESDAY IN THE TROPICS 178
4th April 2023
Four Days in Bagiuo
Dear friends and colleagues
I went once, ten years ago, but this visit was very different because we now know people there: artists Kawayan de Guia, Nona Garcia and film director Moira Lang (previously known as Raymond Lee). And knowing those meant that we met other people, artists and others.
The journey from Manila takes about 4 hours. First you travel by freeway across a very flat agricultural plain. Then, suddenly, you are in the mountains: the road narrows, wiggles and woggles around deep valleys, above vertiginous drops until you get near Baguio itself where you zig zag back and forth on U bends.
We went to see the second manifestation of the exhibition, No Space, that I described as part of my report last letter of the Art Fair Philippines (AFP). Here it was spread across a much larger space and added to it was an installation by Kidlat Tahimik, a now eighty-year old film maker and artist, also the father of Kawayan de Guia. Originally known as Eric Oteyza de Guia he changed his name, I presume, to show his kinship with the indigenous people of the mountainous Cordilleras region. The films he has made of those people are seen as a significant act in them regaining pride in their identity.
- Kidlatt Tahimik installing his work
This installation, mainly consisting of bulol he had bought or commissioned over the years was also meant to commemorate his son who had died unexpectedly a year earlier. I watched as for a long time he moved pieces around, trying to get it right.
2. Kidlatt’s installation seen at opening party
At the opening party the next day (it was very much a party) he and others conga-ed through the crowds beating gongs. Gong making and communal dancing with them is one tradition of the region.
I felt strangely at home. Where I live almost every male, excepting myself, has a regulation short back and sides. Many artists in Baguio like Kidlat have long hair. It felt a bit like being back in Leeds in my student days 1970-74.
Before the party we had visited the Bencab museum. Bencab of a similar age as Kidlatt has been the best-selling and most famous artist in The Philippines for a long time.
3. in the Bencab museum
4. in the Bencab museum cafe
The museum features both his own work and that he has collected. The selection and hanging of works, save for a big exhibition of photographs, seemed very little changed from what we say ten years earlier, which was disappointing. To have such a large collection of bulols and wood carving but no academic texts about how old they might be, where they came from and what they might signify was also especially frustrating. The café is, however, excellent.
5. Leonard Aguinaldo with Geraldine Javier and Moira Lang
The next day we went to visit Leonard Aguinaldo – more wiggles and woggles as drove up and down the many hills Baguio is built on. Aguinaldo is a printmaker who often responds to events in his neighbourhood – the campaign to save the old market against developers being one. Working in rubbercut, or nowadays woodcut his prints are often very large – wall size like the one he showed at AFP. The print market in South-east Asia is under-developed so he also generates some cash flow by printing his work on T-shirts and bags – by screen print. There were several bulols in his studio. He told me on occasion taken them in lieu of payment for prints. The bulol has a significance it seems to any artist in the Cordilleras.
6. View from Leonard Aguinaldo studio – with bulols
One of the peculiarities of Baguio and indicative of its democratic nature, is that many people who lack any art education make paintings or sculptures and sell them at the roadside. Occasionally, such people build a more orthodox art career. Their work can surprise, and prices are low.
7. Geraldine & Moira at wayside art gallery
8. Selecting a painting
The jeepneys are painted differently here too: abstract areas of colour – I will try and shoot better examples when I go to Baguio again!
9. Baguio – jeepney, hills, bends, cracked cement walls.
We did not return empty handed. On our last day we went to the market and bought loads of strawberries, marbled potatoes, cauliflowers, broccoli and other fruit and veg. Because it is higher up vegetables grow well in Baguio. We also came back with a new dog, a Weimaraner puppy called Freya.
10. Freya leaves Baguio
There is a lot I want to write about dogs, why artists often live with dogs, how they affect their art, how having animals is in some curious way kin to making art, but I will save that for another letter.
Till then, look after yourself
Tony