By the sweat of his brows: Sarmogenes reimagines paternity at ILOMOCA

By John Anthony S. Estolloso

For Father’s Day, something rather unconventional was in the works at ILOMOCA.

The afternoon of June 21 opened ‘Putyokan’ to the public, while ending the four-day performance constituting its installation: this was multidisciplinary artist JoAn Sarmogenes’ reimagining of paternity through space and time as ingredients of art as performance. The artist’s traverse through both dimensions becomes the territory on which material structures were built and maintained, reinterpreting the traditional and foundational paternal roles in their materiality.

Nowadays, we rarely use the term putyokan to refer to honeybees. Perhaps we can attribute that to the insects’ dwindling presence in our urban areas, or perhaps we have just acclimatized the contemporary generations to the foreign term. Sarmogenes takes these insects – literary metaphors for diligent industry and toil – as a subtle nod to fatherhood and its functions. Through the days of the performance, the artwork centered on the construction of a hive-like structure, habitable yet in a sense, delicate.

One sensed a territorial materiality in the composition. Barring the construct’s space were literal red tapes, its recurring ‘Fragile’ warnings seemingly reflective of the silent struggles borne on the shoulders of fatherhood: strong and imposing on the outside, yet sensitively tenuous on the inside. Pipe, tape, yarn, wire, and paper conglomerated into a shaky structure. A passing conversation with the artist touched on his father’s illness as inspiration for the asymmetry; as if to emphasize this, a projected reel is constantly at play on the background, superimposing old photographs with a bed-ridden figure of a man in what seems to be his final throes.

Time becomes a platform for praxis of performance: in its threshold, materiality complemented acts of self-abnegation. Sarmogenes fasted during the four days of the performance. Abstaining from solid food and only consuming liquids, it was a metaphorical immolation in the process of creation. There was also linguistic abstinence: no conversation passed between artist and audience, save perhaps what was necessitated by urgency or need. To mark the ‘opening’ of the work to the public, the artist wrapped himself in the obstructing warning tapes even as he peeled it off as dividing lines between art and audience. In the hunger, deprivation, and silence, the work progresses, the structure accumulates, the art – or its essence – comes to life.

Blurring the lines between participants of the artworld, the audience was then invited to immerse into the installation, and tie apian (bee-like) origami scribbled with messages, poems, and dedications for fathers and father-figures. In Putyokan, art does not wait for completion nor confirmation; rather, it is the act of making and toiling itself. This participatory aspect to Sarmogenes’ work further veneered his work with symbolic relevance: pieces must come together, the same way that paternity becomes essentially a hodgepodge of experience, mistakes, and survivals; of making ends meet – that by the sweat of his brows shall life be subsisted.

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Truly yours managed to drop by last Saturday afternoon, while the performance aspect of the art was still in progress and the construction was at its bones. Even as the configuration was beginning to take shape, visitors and staff at the museum cannot help noticing a swarm of buzzing insects outside: by some propitious coincidence, they were honeybees, hovering near one of the yellow-bell trees outside the museum. Perhaps it was the nectar of the flora that attracted them – or we could have a more whimsical and imaginative interpretation on how art attracts its inspirations from nature. The apian congregation lasted but briefly and overwhelmed by the busyness of human activity, the insects moved away to seek some other hive and home.

But Sarmogenes’ hive is still there – momentarily, at least. Pause before it and peruse paternity the next time you drop by the museum.

(The writer is a humanities teacher in one of the private schools of the city. The poster is from the museum.)