Saints, Sconces, and Statues: New exhibits at UPV MACH

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By John Anthony S. Estolloso

Last October 1 saw a change of displays in three galleries of UPV’s Museum of Art and Cultural Heritage. In celebration of the 78^th year of the university’s presence in Iloilo City, the exhibit featured a variety of works in sundry mediums: there were prints, sculptures, and ceramics in both Ed Defensor and Nelfa A. Querubin Galleries; Lantip Changing Exhibition Gallery housed a selection of religious iconography, from antique statues of saints to fragile novenarias still used in some local towns’ patronal fiestas.

Curated by museum director Dr. Martin Genodepa, the revamp of the exhibits marked a shift of aesthetic themes and subjects for the museum. More so, it highlighted partnerships with private collectors, notably exhibiting pieces from the collection of Mr. Mario Yang and Mr. Gilbert Marin. On loan from the artists themselves were selections by Cristhom ‘Dodoy’ Setubal’s, Ed Defensor, and Nelfa Querubin, the works of the latter two taking the spotlight in the galleries which bear their names.

While the artworks on display employ a variety of media, the pervading theme seems to revolve around the idea of perceived religiosity and how we practice it. Historically, religious iconography – under the auspices of cross, crescent, or chakra – becomes a material and visual-tactile manifestation of faith and belief. Sacred or secular, these fulfill the latent need of our humanity to configure abstract doctrine and principle into something more sensory, whether as text, icon, or statuary.

Nowhere is this more palpable than in ‘Debosyon’: within the gallery is a collection of antique sculptures and spiritual accoutrements. The display showcases antiquated revultos of patron saints, crucifixes, and Madonnas, some of which are housed in miniaturized baldachins or canopies, clearly meant to be installed as retablo pieces in some bygone altar of a church. Attached to the walls are ornamental pieces originally meant for processional carrozas and miniaturized sconces, those decorative candleholders borne up by figures of angels or gargoyles. Metalwork included aureolas (halos) intended to embellish the santos’ face; several chalices stand alongside an ornate monstrance and on one corner, a chapel bell sits silent, its last toll rung decades ago. Novenarias and prayer books in glass cases manifest an inlibrated faith where belief becomes literature.

Cristhom Setubal’s miniatures of local churches, with their iconic bricolage of odds and ends set on panels of wood, grace the walls of the gallery, a fitting backdrop to the hefty wooden revultos filling the gallery space. He adds a new dimension to his métier: employing his usual upcycled technique, he attempts portraiture to great success. His Madonnas are mundane without losing touch of the humane, adding a maternal touch to his art’s usual subtext that what is Divine is found in the simplest and humblest of things.

Ed Defensor’s prints of iconic churches and Nelfa Querubin’s abstractions rendered through various manners of printing fill up the next galleries. Complementing the prints on the walls are the latter’s iconic ceramics, fired and processed through the artist’s unique methods of kiln-baking and imprinting of designs: intaglio, block-prints, and lithographs, among others. Ed Defensor’s statuary and installations on display accent his many-hued renderings of churches, the sacred structures preserved and transmuted as images even as they gaze down the abstracted figures of the sculptor.

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While the theme of the exhibit is clear, it also invites the viewer to reflect on the relationship between art and faith, of the embodiment of belief in material imagery. As if to underline this, the wall-text further probes into what demarcates art from artifact, of what differentiates the artist from the artisan, and how art – or artifact – is meant to put some palpable substance to belief. Here, immaterial spirituality is enfleshed in the aged statues of saints and sconces, and through the seamed sheets holding the words of ritual prayer and supplication. Piety is reimagined through image and print – and for all the conflicted theology behind the statuary, devotion and religiosity are palpably manifested through the silent figures.

It seems that the golden cherubs of the Ark of the Covenant were a necessity after all.

(The writer is a language and literature teacher in one of the private schools of the city. The photos are from Cristhom Setubal and are used with his permission.)