Of waves and woodlands: Thrive Art opens new exhibit on Panayanon oral narratives

By John Anthony S. Estolloso

Thrive Art Gallery’s newest exhibit explores and celebrates the rich repository of cultural knowledge and heritage embedded in our local stories. The title is verbose yet nuanced: Sa Ambahanon sang Balod kag Kiay sang Kagulangan, from the songs of the tides and dances of the woods. It suggests hints of melody and movement— elements dear to our tumandok—and recognizes the forces dominating nature that permeate our narratives: the ebb and flow of waves and the undulations of our flora and fauna.

The exhibit featured the works of Brandon Banga, Kristoffer Brasileño, Paul John Cabanalan, Manuel Jucar, Katelyn Miñoso, Oscar Peñasales, Mia Reyes, Leonil ‘Sabrec’ Cerbas, El Dosado, Noel de Leon, Oman Gaitana, Jose Taton, and Jyz Tilos. In a nook of the gallery, artists from Sinag Buhat Artist Collective installed a panoramic set depicting characters from our myths.

Central to the retelling of mythology is characterization: how persona is portrayed channels the narrative’s relevance and understandability to its audience. This contextualization is especially palpable in the portraits and sketches by Kristoffer Brasileño, Mia Reyes, and Jay Tilos. Their reconfigurations of mythological characters through contemporary imagery situate these stories for contemporary sensibilities. In other frames, El Dosado and Sabrec’s use of animal figures offers an accompanying perspective of how nature serves as an abode whence the phantasmagorical and the supernatural come to play.

Sabrec’s ‘Tigbaliw’ became the subject of lively conversation among viewers during the exhibit’s vernissage. In the artwork, the act of transformation is transmuted through parallel images: a female figure perusing a bottle is placed asymmetrically alongside a menagerie of beasts. Interspersed through the length of the artwork are geometric annotations remarkable to Sabrec’s art: circles and lines attempting to project what seemed like lunar phases. The figures and their arrangement invite queries: is this a depiction of the many facets of our humanity or an attempt to portray that which we stow away in the collective unconscious? Check out the gallery to find the answers.

Extending to abstraction and assemblage, Paul John Cabanalan and Oman Gaitan’s art adds another layer of interpretation to myth. Visibly inspired by modern abstract traditions, cubist and fauvist techniques are perceivable in their canvases. Meanwhile, Roland Manuel Jucar’s striking fusion of protruding epoxy on acrylic provides a physicality to the grotesqueness of its subject’s wild beauty. In contrast, Katelyn Miñoso’s abstract impressionism sticks to her iconic matted colors coagulating in pools of shade and light.

Stepping into the art scene is Noel de Leon’s series of collages, composed of strips and shreds of paper overlapping each other. At a glance, it appears to be some form of tapestry woven together — yet there is no weaving here save perhaps in the meanings between the shreds. Here is the medium as memory-keeper and tale-teller reimagined into a (literally) layered iteration of narrative. Quite aptly, the titles of the four displayed frames evoke glimpses into local lore and literature — of literary fire and word-flow, of sirens-dreams and sprite-whispers.

At the corner of the gallery is the tableaux portraying these mythological creatures. Arranged in a theatrical mise-en-scène of cardboard, the figures seem to emerge from the set-like assemblage: a nuno sa punso sits surreptitiously in a corner while a leering kapre peeks from carton fronds, the stub of a cigar clenched between its fingers. At the eaves, the soaring form of a bakunawa chases after a paper moon; a kataw perches seductively at the opposite corner, side-eyeing a rafflesia bloom beside her. As if to echo her image, Brandon Banga’s own take on the kataw portrays the creature curled up in a pensively forlorn pose, as if some sailor has managed to escape the fatal charms of her siren-song. Here are the creatures of forest and sea, the spirits of leaf and wave emerging from literary somnolence.

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At the onset of the vernissage, ethnomusicologist Prof. Jose Taton and musician Rolinda Gilbaliga performed ‘Ginangis’ on the litgit, our indigenous viol made of bamboo and hemp rope. The music is an aspiration to the sounds produced by the cicada (gangis in local parlance). But rarely does one hear the insect’s strumming anymore; urbanization has displaced the creature. Thus the music evoked both presence and absence — a remnant of sound and of simulation.  Added to this, truly yours learned afterwards that what was heard was but a surviving fragment of a body of musical works lost to posterity, a dying piece of art slowly fading with the passing of master performers and the lack of active cultural transmission.

So it goes with our myths and stories. Perhaps what our oral narratives need are new ways of approaching them, perhaps through contemporary images: there on the canvas and the sculpted image shall we find new ways to listen to the songs of the tides and to revel in the dances of the woods.

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