Unearthing Pinoy past in a Parisian museum

PARIS, France — It is springtime in Paris. Albert Camus is on the cover of the latest issue of Philosophie magazine, bannered about in newspaper stands everywhere. The ghosts of Picasso, Duchamp, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir haunt the cafes on the Left Bank, the espresso glasses clinking endlessly. Lampposts glow, gargoyles of stone kiss the sky. Parisian couples snake their way into the labyrinthine limbs of France’s elegant capital, snuggling on main streets, blowing smoke rings into the gray. All the loves gone noir. Yes, it is the springtime of lovin’ here in the City of Lights, but inside the Musée du Quai Branly it is… Our Time.

We are here in Paris for the opening reception of “Philippines: Archipel des échanges (An Archipelago of Exchange),” a landmark exhibition of pre-colonial Filipino artifacts and ancestral art co-curated by homegrown anthropologist Corazon Alvina, the consulting curator of the Metropolitan Museum in Manila, and French art historian Constance de Monbrison, who is in charge of Quai Branly’s insular Southeast Asia collections.

The first exhibition of its kind in Europe, “Philippines: Archipel des échanges” presents four national cultural treasures (the Oton Death Mask; Palawan Zoomorphic Ear Pendant; Pendant flower, fragment of ear pendant with ring and quadrangular body; and the Maitum Anthropomorphic Burial Jar from South Cotabato) as well as more than 350 pre-colonial works — sculptures, pottery, textiles and personal ornaments. The show is one for the ages, we must say.

Vice President Jejomar Binay flew in for the opening reception. French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault is making his first visit to Branly Museum, which has the museum staff all-excited. French Ambassador to the Philippines Gilles Garachon is here. So is Philippine Ambassador to France Cristina Ortega.

“There has never been a major exhibition of pre-colonial Philippine art in Europe,” explains Branly Museum president Stéphane Martin. After the exhibition at UCLA’s Fowler Museum in 1981 and the small one at Musée de l’Homme in 1994, Martin and his colleagues felt that it was important that a comprehensive exhibition be organized. The project was conceived of more than five years ago, with the prestigious Musée du Quai Branly as the projected venue.

Branly is among Europe’s premier museums dedicated to the arts and civilizations of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. (The Philippines is well represented in the museum. The famous bowl figure that was formerly in the Jacques Kerchache collection is now on view at the Pavillon de Sessions, Branly’s gallery at the Louvre.) The museum, near the banks of the Seine and the illuminated-at-night Eifel Tower, receives an average of 1,400,000 visitors annually.

“Together with Corazon Alvina, we began to reflect on how to put together an event that would feature important works from both private and public collections,” he shares. The pieces came from various collections in the Philippines (the National Museum, the Central Bank of the Philippines and The Ayala Museum, and private collectors) as well as France, the United States, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Austria.

Cora Alvina and Stéphane Martin were colleagues at ASEMUS (Asia-Europe Museum Network). When Martin visited the Philippines a couple of years back, he discovered, started appreciating, and was intrigued by Filipino art. Talks about the future exhibition got underway. Strategies and logistics were mulled over,  ideas hatched.

The wheels were in spin.

There is a geographical pattern to the exhibition, Alvina tells me. It’s like a tour of the Garden Gallery straight out of a Rimbaud prose poem minus the derangement of the senses.

You journey (upriver and over-ground, metaphorically) from the Northern highlands of Luzon, to Mindanao and its phalanx of warrior costumes and ornaments, down south to Palawan and Sulu — from the uplands and its philosophies of planting to the sea and its channels of trade. Epiphanies inevitably sprout along the way. The past unearthed, the present revaluated, and the future possibly deciphered.

And what a rewarding trip this is.

Walk this way

“What relationship has given the most of material culture? That would be exchange... ’yung nagbibigayan tayo,” says Alvina, explaining how the theme revolves around objects of exchange.

“Exchange in terms of trade, commerce, ritual exchange, gifting, andami-daming nating forms (of exchange) as a community. Not just in terms of the physical but also of intangible exchange because we have epics, how you commune with spirits and nature.”

Mortal, immortal. Our world, the otherworld. Male, female. Symmetry, asymmetry. Nature, man. The relationships of exchanges are infinite.

Alvina points out how in the Cordilleras the entire cycle of life is touched: “You have the bul-ol rice divinities, you have the people, you have the Rice Terraces, you have rice, the hagabi bench, the Kadangyan.”

The woman has made anthropology the center of her being. The past runs through her veins, lives in her present. For the press conference for the Branly show held in December last year at The Ayala Museum, Alvina wore her grandfather’s Barong Tagalog re-cut into a classy Filipiniana dress. A statement of sorts, we’re darn sure.  

That Alvina is quite thrilled the exhibition is being held in Paris, yes; but she is doubly elated that it is being held at Musée du Quai Branly.

“Of all the ethnographic museums in the entire world, Branly is the most meticulous. It specializes in the research, in conservation and in building the narratives.”

What one notices about the “Archipel des échanges” exhibition at Musée du Quai Branly is how the people involved in the project carefully, skillfully built the context around the objects on view — even in the exhibition design. It’s not just a caboodle of objects clustered accordingly, labeled. The exhibition tells the story of Our People. What National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) chairman Felipe de Leon calls it a chronicle of our cultural, artistic and intellectual life before the Spaniards arrived.

Alvina agrees. She adds, “So, to be recognized for the indigenous art of the Philippines, to be given this affirmation by the primary museum for ethnographic art is — napakalaki. Napaka-significant and napaka-substantial ng Philippine indigenous art. It is so rich and it is so deep.” 

The curator says she got the chance to talk to French and journalists from other countries and they were quite impressed by the exhibition. They were stunned not by the sheer number but by the variety, quality and depth of the artifacts and ancestral artworks. In fact, a British journalist was able to deduce the spiritual dimension of some of the exhibited pieces.

I dig her deduction. My favorite part of the exhibition was the section on “Jarres Funéraires” — featuring burial jars galore, skulls jutting out of cracks and holes. Our ancestors’ version of the afterlife must’ve been quite a vision.

“It’s the most ‘emo’ part of the exhibition,” I jokingly tell a French colleague. 

Through the past, brightly

“We’re quite moved at the highlighting of our heritage,” shares Jeremy Barns, National Museum director. “The French have done their very best — in terms of technical aspect, lighting. We’re certainly gratified that our pieces have been given such consideration. It’s something we could all be proud of.”

Ana Labrador, National Museum assistant director, gives us a tour of some of the key pieces — a cool mounted kudyapi (with strings attached), the panolong, etc. The way the death mask is mounted makes it seem as if it’s floating inside the glass case. 

“What’s been done was to support the middle so it won’t break because it’s very soft gold,” she explains. We specifically asked (Branly to include this) because it’s a point of pride for us. Most of these pieces are archeological finds, gathered from active ethnographic fieldwork.”

Labrador amplifies the significance of the Branly show. “It’s always nice to have foreign countries as proving grounds for how worthy our collections are. Sometimes it takes outsiders  to value our treasures, and then we go, ‘Yes, they are important,’ because we take things for granted.” 

Barns and Labrador walked the city yesterday afternoon, with Barns pointing at the house where Juan Luna shot his wife and mother-in-law in a fit of jealousy. Jose Rizal once visited Musée Dupuytren, which houses anatomical items illustrating diseases and malformations. Rizal must’ve gotten quite a kick out of that. Paris is a bouillabaisse of stories such as those, I tell you.

It is springtime in Paris. And each story of our ancestors springs eternal at Musée du Quai Branly.

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“Philippines: Archipel des échanges (An Archipelago of Exchange),” is on view until July 14 at Musée du Quai Branly, 37 Quai Branly, Paris, France. For information, visit www.quaibranly.fr/en/.

Special thanks to Senator Loren Legarda.

To French Ambassador to the Philippines Gilles Garachon and Philippine Ambassador to France Cristina Ortega.

To the Department of Tourism’s Verna Covar-Buensuceso and Venus Tan.

To the Philippine Embassy in France’s Deena Amatong and Edgardo Esteban, to Rachel Sibugan and Kristine Sheree Mangunay from the office of Senator Legarda.