Has the paint dried yet?
Somewhere in Singapore from May into June there was an exhibit of women painters and artists entitled, aptly enough, “Ladies’ First,” which included the works of Marika Constantino, lately of the Tutok group of artists. Marika had sent an invite to the exhibit, no plane ticket (asa ka pa), that featured a painting of what seemed to be the artist at maybe nine years old. It turns out, as the painter was to inform me later, that the subject was her youngest daughter. Could have fooled me. The likeness was, how shall we put it, astonishing to say the least, even when viewed as an email attachment.
Singapore has been a favorite spawning ground of many a Pinoy artist, and the island state also happens to be where many of them gather for group shows and the like, whether or not under the watchful eye of big bro, who knows?
Jose Tence Ruiz, the painter and Marika’s Tutok buddy, spent some time there in the ’90s or thereabouts, honing his craft in between swigs of beer with other River Valley Road boys. It was from Tence we first heard about the photographs of Wawi Navarroza, who is currently (until July anyway) part of a group show and Philippine-Japan exchange at the National Museum, the Pinoy part entitled “Swarm in the Aperture,” which evokes a constant flurry of images.
A search of the Internet will lead the cyber surfer to a website for a sampling of Navarroza’s photos, and here observe the unusual quality of light in them. There are pictures of a forest probably in Russia, faces of peasants, women and mirrors, most if not all in black and white. One might say that the photographer is a natural, clicking the camera at the exact same moment of the subject’s revelation, and so maintaining a spontaneous connection that lasts even when viewed by the next peruser of photos.
Navarroza once had a band, the Late Isabel, kind of Pinoy gothic. Limited-edition CD copies of the band’s Doll’s Head might be had in the more better-stocked music stores, and if the band is anything like her photos, then the Late Isabel is certainly worth listening to.
The photographer also took part in the retrospective tribute to the painter Frida Kahlo held sometime ago at the Instituto Cervantes, which was just as well. Not a few have noted a striking resemblance between Kahlo and Navarroza — the facial features, particularly the eyes, cheek bones, mouth.
Comes now a text message from Cesar Ruiz Aquino from Dumaguete, about a GFN (Great Filipino Novel) better even than Joaquin and Rizal. Could this be possible? He gave me the blog spot of the mystery novel, which can’t be divulged just yet, but it turned out to be an excerpt from the novel in progress of Erwin Castillo, the much-awaited Cape Engaño.
The excerpt begins with the seven metaphysicals lounged in what could be a sweet spot overlooking the sea, as they go through rather metaphysical discussions that verge on the masonic yet always beloved of women. The language is, as can be expected from Castillo, drunk with lyric prose, and with echoes of Nolledo and Pynchon. Why is it that the line that begins Gravity’s Rainbow, about “a screaming across the sky,” should always remind us of Castillo’s long short story, or is it novelette, “The Watch for La Diane?”
That story remains a must-read for avid students of Philippine literature in English, just as Cape Engaño, when it comes out, would be required reading for any Filipino who swore at the gale of winds that blew in our first bastard ancestors from Acapulco.
Also from Aquino, via SMS, is news of a forthcoming exhibit by a pair of painters from his hometown of Zamboanga. One of them is Isidro Floreta “whose name sounds like painting itself,” according to the texter. Many years ago I had the good fortune of viewing some of Floreta’s works when he had an exhibit at Madrigal Center in Ayala Alabang with his fellow Zamboangueño, the maskmaker Willie Arseña.
That was the first and only time I met him. Though Arseña was not around at the time I eventually made acquaintance with the maskman in Dumaguete City sometime in the 1990s, when we were both visiting Aquino at his digs in Taclobo. Evenings were spent in the beer gardens on Alfonso Trece, as the tricycles hummed and made their sad racket well into the night. Arseña gave me a mask of what looked like a Zambo warrior, which I left in the in-laws’ place in Siaton, deep in southern Negros. I’m sure it still hangs there on one of the walls of that house, its nostrils smelling the scent of the endemic citrus tree at dusk.
Art comes alive with the paint not quite having dried yet on the Sunday afternoon radio show of the ballerina ng bayan, Lisa Macuja. Art 2 Art airs 3:30 p.m. Sundays on dzRH, 666 on the AM radio dial. Every last Sunday of the month there’s a tribute to a National Artist, and on the last Sunday of June the radio show features my father, the writer Francisco Arcellana, who died in 2002.
Lisa’s staff invited me to be a resource person, and the show was pre-taped at the MBC building in CCP complex. Lisa asked me questions ranging from what it was like growing up with the National Artist, to what Franz Arcellana was like both as father and writer.
I half worried whether my mumbling would be picked up by the mic, but was assured that it did, including a free plug on a forthcoming book of my father’s which we in the family had proofread, mostly essays from the old days, which is part of the UP Centennial publications. Reading him again was like he had never left.
It was a novel experience, being on radio, for which I thank Lisa, whose dance is like music is like poetry. One of these days there will be a pirated DVD version of “Swan Leg,” in the Quiapo of the fifth dimension.
