Gilda Cordero Fernando: The 'burgis' as Filipino artist

Hobbled way back by museum and gallery fatigue, nonetheless, I worked my way up recently to the second floor of the Silverlens gallery in Pasong Tamo, into a Disneyland inhabited by Hieronymus Bosch and Onib creatures, fat cats of varying dispositions, fabulous jeepneys as never imagined by those jeepney artists a generation ago, fantastic flora from some child’s dream, and the irrepressible Aling Dionisia traipsing in Forbes Park, unmindful of the baleful stares of those snooty elitistas.

Who could have created this enchanting menagerie, and a historical and contemporary cross section of the Filipino plutocracy as well? Who else but that beautiful writer and social commentator, Gilda Cordero Fernando! The sadness of it all is, by the time you read this, the show is no longer there. This then is a recommendation for you not to miss this incredible talent in her exhibit next year.

Maybe, I am guilty of being much too nice to a fellow writer, but behind this happy bias is a solid background in the arts and, most important, an understanding of culture not simply as a form of egoistic expression but as social comment, and therefore, a reflection of reality.

We see in Gilda’s work, whether it is visual or literature how our condition is transformed into art without the essence of that condition being violated by the vibrant colors of alchemy or by evocative prose. That reality which is truth — as indeed truth can be so deceptively simple — enables us to ingest it easier, without it disturbing our sense of the normal and the pleasing. When finally ingested, that truth as depicted by the artist is enlarged with meaning, and reality then becomes experience, confirming the reformatory or even revolutionary vision which all art becomes.

It is in this manner that the artist appeals not just to one individual, but to all who can see in one frame or in one page what they did not perceive before. The viewer/reader rediscovers his own inner eye, and confirms in himself that universal sensibility with which we understand the material world.

Without perhaps meaning to, art also enriches human experience, self knowledge, and the moral foundation of our humanity — although this conclusion may not be that easy to presume; for so many of us, art is just one of those things which gives nothing more than pleasure.

I would like to think that art such as Gilda’s work gives us both.

We were going home one evening when, at the intersection of West Avenue and EDSA, there was this giant billboard that dominated that area. It was no illusion — there was that beautiful and familiar face smiling at all passersby. Gilda, 70 years old, lovely to look at, between two young men who could have been her grandsons. I forgot what the billboard advertised, but whatever, it illustrated that ethereal quality of a woman who never ages.

Of the older writers I knew, what came to mind immediately was the late Estrella Alfon who, even in her last rickety days, was always radiant. Through it all, she continued to write and share her grace and good humor with all us.

If the billboard complemented Gilda physically, her paintings confirm not just her artistry and her internal vision but the way she looks at the world.

Sure, there is something one dimensional in her paintings but there is a lot of depth to them, in the symbolism which they exude, whether she is commenting on us or on other living things. Her touch is whimsical on the surface and her imagination is always fresh — a quality which, alas, so many of our artists do not have. There is just too much of the literal and the visceral in their work, particularly the portrait painters. Sure, they know how to attract housewives with pretty touches and glowing colors that could brighten any drab living room, but that imaginative spark which is so fundamental in great art is seldom there. This is so, maybe because our art critics do not talk about it, because the art schools cannot teach it, and maybe because, Filipino artists like most of us are shallow.

But because she is also an excellent writer who thinks, Gilda is never shallow.

Gilda’s parents belong to the old Ermita aristocracy; her husband, Marcelo Fernando, an engineer, is from the same privileged precinct. Reared in convent schools, with an MA from the Ateneo, Gilda’s social background is definitely burgis, but like those who experienced World War II, that comfortable world was shattered in 1945 when she survived the trauma of liberation — the massacre and the burning of Manila’s elite enclave. From that experience emerged her story, “People in the War” which, to me, as editor of the old Sunday Times Magazine, is the best story ever to emerge from that holocaust.

Gilda’s fiction belong to the finest; she could easily stand side by side with the world’s best, Joseph Conrad, Willa Cather, Doris Lessing — and this is not hyperbole; the truth of the matter is that we have already produced great literature in English. Gilda, Nick Joaquin, Kerima Polotan, Greg Brillantes, the poet Cirilo Bautista, and coming up, Charlson Ong, Criselda Yabes — their stature and that of so many brilliant writers in the so-called “Developing World” are not globally recognized because we don’t have the reach of Western writers who, in a sense, have colonized our cultures.

Furthermore, the long hangover of colonialism persists to this very day, so obvious and so pervasive we do not seem to recognize it. Ask so called sophisticated young people who are the writers they read — and in all probability, they will not mention a single Filipino writer. And look at our bookshops, their shop window displays do not include Filipino books, and if they display Filipino books at all, no matter how excellent, they are shoved in some unfrequented corner called Filipiniana.

Gilda’s immersion in the muck of the underclass and in the miasma of our history is both instinctive and studied. As an artist, she was never inured to the bizarre realities outside Ermita and her burgis upbringing. This is as it should be — the artist who refuses to be contextual is not only blind and insensitive — that artist had also lost his humanity.

When Alfredo Roces was putting out that landmark series on Philippine culture and history, Gilda was his assistant editor and as such, she was academically exposed to the contradictions, the labyrinths of our epic past. Then in 1967 when I opened our Solidaridad Galleries, an attraction of the gallery was her folk art center which exhibited artifacts of our folk culture — brass work from Mindanao, wood carvings from the Cordilleras and Laguna, and all those creations of the folk which illustrate our innate craftsmanship.

Such carefully nurtured background enabled her to write with precision two collections of short fiction, several children’s books, several collections of essays, plays, and at the same time publish half a dozen books on our social mores.

The other year, Gilda was honored by the Ateneo University with its Gawad Tanglaw ng Lahi. Here are excerpts from that searing and memorable acceptance speech.

“As recently as two weeks ago, at a cocktail party, I ran into a wealthy and very influential culture vulture whom I admired. ‘I now go to Hong Kong for my culture fix,’ he said. ‘There are three cultural festivals a year with the works — classical and contemporary, even Cirq de Soleil — everything you can dream of.’

“Then he followed it up with ‘Dapat naman tayong mahiya! How backward we are! Our shows are so ramshackle, the CCP is getting so shabby, the government does not support the art, etc., etc.’ I almost lost my cool. I wanted to lash out, ‘And what have you, with all your money and power and taste done about it?’

“It is the same privileged class who, when you are promoting something Filipino — whether book, performance, painting, bamboo house — will say, ‘Don’t impose it on me, please!’ Implying, I’m perfectly fine with a Broadway play, a Korean telenovela, a Mediterranean house and Sex and the City. ‘Why would I want to contribute (or buy a ticket) to whatever weird project you’re up to?’ People who complain never put their money where their mouth is.

“Being Filipino is considered by many average educated Pinoys as such as lowly calling — the bahay kubo, the aswang, the sinamay, the sinigang, the kundiman, the moro-moro. Note that even some of the powers-that-be of culture self rarely show our lumad in costumes as other than curiosities and with as little respect as they were once displayed in the St. Louis Exposition of the 1900s.

“And how many times have we been asked, ‘Aren’t you migrating? Think of our children, what future do they have here?’ What future indeed, as the eminent Prof. Jun de Leon would say in his landmark UP centennial speech, ‘When the cultural sources of our education are western and it is inevitable that the expertise graduates acquire is better applicable to a western industrialized society than to a rural, agricultural setting which most of the Philippines is?’ and Florentino Hornedo adds, ‘It looks like the Philippines is spending money for the training of our country’s citizens to become another country’s assets.’

“Filipinos have always been a special race beloved by God — creative and beautiful, graceful and multi-talented, a connecting, resilient, hard-working and big-hearted people, loyal to the max. After finding one’s particular calling as a Filipino, one must never let go of it. Everything is interconnected and into one’s life will spontaneously drop all those helpful occurrences, chance encounters, coincidences and synchronicities to cheer one on. Don’t be impatient. Because five or so years down the line, or maybe when you’re old like me, there will be a convergence. Suddenly you are no longer the underdog. The time for your initiative — whether arnis, saya, aswang or bamboo house, has ripened. And its fruits are very sweet.”