Paintings by Trix, new poetry by Cirilo
My former partner-in-crime for a weekly television show on arts and culture, Beatrix Syjuco, gained another milestone in her effervescent creative life last Thursday, March 5, when she opened a solo exhibition of paintings at Galerie Astra.
Titled “An Unfair Vanity,” the show highlighted Trix’s recent forays into concrete abstraction, with 12 large paintings that are part of the series she calls “Phenomena.”
Previously hailed as a provocative performance and video-installation artist, the beauteous and multi-talented Trix has been ramping up her work on large canvases, with terrific results. Last year at the Art in the Park in Salcedo Village, she was the only featured artist who sold out all of her works, mostly to walk-by strangers.
Her exhibit opening was highlighted by live performances from the Electric Underground Collective (EUC), Bobby Balingit and Planeta Ng Ngiti, Danny Sillada, Orville D.R. Tiamson, Joseph RJ Cruz, Eghai Roxas, Ian Madrigal, and a host of other writer-artist-musicians.
National Artist for Literature Cirilo F. Bautista with his inspirational muse Rose Marie.
Her own folks, performance art pioneers Jean Marie Syjuco and Cesare A.X. Syjuco, also rendered show-stoppers, joined in by film actor-director and bar bandit Ronnie Lazaro, as well as poetry readers, among them her sister and coeval goddess Maxine Syjuco and poet RayVi Sunico. Guests of honor who cut the ceremonial rubbon were the illustrious poet Virgie Moreno and painter Gus Albor.
Beatrix Syjuco’s paintings have been described as “powerful, iconic images carved from the artist’s fertile imagination.”
I asked her recently about her crossover to painting, and what motivates her in her resurgent creativity.
She said that she has a clearer understanding now of her views on art, and why she paints, despite never having received “formal training” in this field.
“I love the fact that I never had to learn to paint in a particular way. Everything that takes place on the surface — the problem-solving, the markings and erasures — are all akin to my own thought processes. My works are graphic portraits of my mind.
“The whole thing is more of a subtractive process than an additive one. It is an immersive cleansing process for me. Painting clears my head of ghosts, and that is such a powerful thing.”
“An Unfair Vanity” lasts till March 20 at Galerie Astra, located at 2/F LRI Design Plaza, 210 Nicanor Garcia St., Bel-Air, Makati City.
This Thursday, March 12, another family event we can’t miss is National Artist for Literature Cirilo F. Bautista’s book launch cum readings and conversation at The Verdure, Henry Sy Sr. Hall Multipurpose Room at De La Salle University on Taft Avenue, Manila.
Things Happen: Poems 2012 is dear Toti’s 11th book of poems, “all written in 2012 in an inspired stretch of imagination: narrative transcriptions of social and personal experiences that have affected his views of humanity — suffering, pain, hunger, war, love…”
Known for his epic poetry, a trilogy of which has long been acknowledged as his premier achievement, here he reverts to the lyric poem, 78 of them that effortlessly engage any reader with their personal takes on commonplace themes and motifs turned inside out with casual acuity.
The event serves as DLSU’s tribute to its longtime professor who has mentored generations of poets and writers, including those who now administer the literature and creative writing programs instituted by the university, such as Shirley Lua and Dinah Roma.
“Remarks of Circumstance” by Br. Dennis Magbanua, FSC, DLSU’s OIC president, launches the four-hour program that starts from 4:30 p.m., followed by a video presentation on the honoree and the awarding of a Token of Honor to the newly proclaimed
National Artist for Literature, with Br. Magbanua assisted by Vice Chancellor for Academics Dr. Myrna Austria and College of Liberal Arts Dean Julio Teehankee.
Then the Cirilo F. Bautista Program for the Literary Arts will be presented by Dr. Dinah Roma, chair of the Department of Literature. Follows the presentation of the first book copies to the author, plus “A Word from the Publisher” by Dr. John Jack Wigley, director of University of Santo Tomas Publishing House.
Selected poems from the book will be read by the author’s friends: Dr. Gémino H. Abad, Alice Sun Cua, Carlomar Arcangel Daoana, Marjorie Evasco, Dinah Roma, and this writer.
Performances by Farida Kabayao will precede “Conversation with Bautista” as hosted by Lito B. Zulueta, while the closing remarks are to be given by Dr. Myrna Austria, before the book signing and dinner reception.
The poem I chose to read is titled “Old Men in the City”:
“In concrete houses above the moon, the wind/ howls through windows unlocked and forlorn/ to ease the pains of old men who cannot sleep./ There is no fire to light in their heart,/ only the slow heaving of grief at the edge/ of nightmares and miracles./ A fire in the moon they might as well be/ whose warmth distorts the vast solitude of nothing/ or mocks the bones that would like to close/ the distance between thought and flesh./ Done to perfection, bah, the exemplum of restlessness/ without end, and if by force of wisdom allowed/ to grab the wind’s tail, they flounder and sputter./ Horsemen trample their hairless chest./ Dancing girls spell their doom, they have no sugar/ for their fruit and bread./ In the morning I see them/ walking in the roof garden, their bones like hinges/ creaking in the sun. ‘Sing us a song, sing us a song,’/ their eyes tell me, but I do not understand them.”
Take note: “moon wind fire heart… nightmares and miracles… warmth bones thought flesh…” With these images and abstractions is the poem architected. “Done to perfection” is the first and only idiom used. A bravely original phrase is “the exemplum of restlessness.”
The favored images are replayed, extended, enhanced: “A fire in the moon” and “the wind’s tail.” Verbs include “howls, distorts, mocks, grabs, flounder, sputter, trample, walking, creaking…”
Nothing ivory-tower or dense here; the poem is crystalline in its purpose, seemingly of low-intensity engagement as befits its subject: old men. “Dancing girls spell their doom, they have no sugar/ for their fruit and bread.” These are the brightest lines, drawing that necessary shock of recognition, however mild, with a superlative assertion layered with ironic, off-hand counterpoint and undertone. Ageing men’s concerns with sweets are underscored so casually.
“(B)ones like hinges” is the single instance of simile, and is made even more memorable with its extension, “creaking in the sun” out there in a “roof garden” — where the old men’s eyes implore: “Sing us a song…” And the poet as I-persona professes unintelligibility, himself perchance an old man in the city.
It is the studiously wry Cirilo-as-poet that I have long admired, over and above the the cycles of brilliant, personalized renderings of racial history, and how he turns narratives on their own head, with inherent music and prosody.
Here he has another poem, titled “Fugitive,” which I would also have delighted in reading aloud: “I eat in restaurants whose dishes/ have names I can’t pronounce, I drink/ from wells in backwoods where men still walk/ for locomotion. I sing a song/ to drive the dark away. This is because/ I’m not myself most of the time when it/ moves backwards to snatch a piece of history/ and prove I’m wrong….”
There are poems on places: “Mourners from San Mateo,” “Botolan Scenery,” “At the Top of Mount Santo Tomas.” And poems with casually intriguing titles, such as “Do You Like Vic Damone?” (“If you like Damone you know the surname/ of passion is anything a kiss has not touched/ and must touch…”); “Henry Miller in Paris” (“… He’s been dead/ several years now but he must be there/ somewhere sipping his whiskey. People/ like him don’t vanish just like that.// They hide messages under our skin/ and make us live uncomfortable lives.”); and “In Praise of Sardines” (“you gaze at a small splendor —/ six sardines, each about four inches long,/ ensconced in a rectangular tin can,/ redolent with olive oil/ and tomato sauce, premium delectation./ avant garde of the tongue, nothing to scoff at,/ companion of the lonely.”). And there’s a remarkable 24-line, run-on poem that is all of one sentence: “Spy.”
Nothing modest in this collection. It is quintessential Cirilo F. Bautista, scanning distant horizons and proximate roofs with the same ulterior eye, uncovering urban dystopia and countryside charm, no writhing with words but rather dispensing free and easy subtleties of speech that transform any setting or situation into unique realms of query, song, intimacy.
Always there’s an examination of the seemingly mundane, bringing to personal light whatever that surgical eye sees beneath any surface. With his singular brand of introspection, Cirilo F. Bautista rewards us with clear threads of exposition.
Things happen in his watch.
