Nuances of the Feminine: Women’s Month at ILOMOCA

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By John Anthony S. Estolloso (Canvas, Celluloid, Curtain)

How does an art museum celebrate womanhood?

Last weekend, Iloilo Museum of Contemporary Art (ILOMOCA) opened Babak Niaraki’s The Red Chair and mounted 033 Playhouse’s Baye-Baye in its Hulot Gallery: the former a collection of portraits of poses capturing the naked female form in diverse contexts, the latter a dramatic compendium of monologues, songs, and dances which ‘interrogate, reconstruct, and challenge existing representations of women in the past and present,’ as critic Noel Galon de Leon sharply observed.

Baye-Baye stole the spotlight with its literary depth. Like its gastronomic namesake, the repertoire stuck to the audience’s sensibilities with its earthy, bittersweet narratives. Comprised of vignettes capturing the sundry shades of the Filipina’s lived experiences, the dramaturgy framed contemporary issues and themes through a feminist lens even as it coursed through thespian storytelling, one ranging from the truthfully comic to the poignantly tragic.

Still, the stories were tenderly familiar enough though undeniably distressing: the shattering effect of a typhoon’s destructive wrath to a child’s innocent sensibilities; the persistently lingering and soul-consuming bouts of depression surfacing through a tense phone call; the sad lament of women enmeshed in broken families and chained to a seemingly incessant cycle of hellos and goodbyes; the harrowing experiences of women in the time of dictatorship, elevated to dramatic monologues revealing intimate glimpses of fear, hope, love, and nationalistic fervor; the performatives and gestures suggestive of a metaphorical diorama of the feminine struggle to break away from side-lines and through glass ceilings.

That most of the narratives were written by men for women seemed to be an ironically paradoxical aside. Yet, this did not lessen the veracity of feminine representation – nor did it diminish dramatic intensity. The segments delivered by Phineemar Magbanua, Anthea Dulfo, and Quezzy Claire Pedregosa oozed with honest sentimentality; Anj Enriquez and Lyka Laspiñas’s fervid musicality verged on the heartrending – and who would have escaped the sublime anguish in Ruth Lazaro’s dancing? In all appearances, the deliveries paraphrased Simone de Beauvoir: the soul of man is indeed a woman.

Two monologues from Chris B. Millado’s Buwan at Baril sa E♭ Major surfaced in the programme. Evoking scenes from Marcos Sr.’s regime, their stories entwined the historical with the personal. Gian Bermudo as a socialite in all her rampaging glory, ready to take on a dictator’s machinations, was a delight to behold. In contrast, Elsie Flores-Gandia’s as a bereaved wife asked to identify the remains of her ‘salvaged’ husband, was wretchedly pitiable. The juxtaposition revealed not only the personal ordeals of women; it placed them on the spotlight of historical conflict, even snidely suggesting that dictatorships begin to buckle when feminine voices start to vilify and mock despots.

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On the main gallery floor of the museum, the nude portraits of Babak Niaraki’s exhibit ‘The Red Chair’ are arrayed in a demure row of framed photographs. A solitary vacant chair of upholstered red leather stands on the center, set on a lachrymose background of black cloth. The exhibition notes describe the juxtaposition of images and empty throne as a “a potent symbol of the [artist’s] struggle between societal expectations and individual authenticity.” And quite rightly so.

As such, non-conformity weaves through the imagery. From the pregnant to the tattooed, the exposure of female flesh and skin to the public gaze stirs the viewer to an uncomfortable degree of appreciation. But there is little of the erotic in the poses: one might search for maternal warmth or gymnastic litheness in the figures, but these only underscore the obstinate individual deviance confronting social mores and accepted conventions – for all the elaborately posed drapery of warm bodies, not one nude figure sits properly on the chair.

Granted, Niaraki’s photographs question and push the boundaries of shared sensibilities. However, they also put the nudeness of the figures under the scrutiny of a Janus-faced lens: while projected to be breaking free from a normative corset, they are simultaneously encaged in sundry gazes open to varied understandings. As such, the naked body, as the subject of the art, runs the risk of being objectified by the public gaze. Hence, the lingering question would be which interpretations hold a faithful mirror to the subjects of the artwork.

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Whether clothed in stories or denuded by the camera lens, these representations of femininity persistently echo both the celebration of womanhood and the constant struggle for her rights. And it continues: whence shall glass ceilings shatter and the side-lines take the center?

[The writer is the subject area coordinator for Social Studies in one of the private schools of the city. The posters are used with permission from the museum and 033 Playhouse.]