To heel and back
It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure. — Marquis de Sade
To see this arbitrary sampling from the history of footwear, one cannot fail to notice the fine line between shoe collecting and shoe fetishism, between fashion and function, and indeed, between pleasure and pain. From the humblest straw sandal worn by peasants in the province, to the highest of heels, unwearable except in the imagination, the shoe comes across as a violent invention, one meant to bind, deform and suffocate — albeit a beautiful one, a gilded cage. The free foot, bare and unprotected, suffers a fall from grace and, in shame or in knowledge, clothes itself in leather and silk.
The exhibit Portraits of Shoes - Stories of Feet, presented by Alliance Francaise de Manille, the French Embassy and Air France - KLM, is on view at the Yuchengco Museum. It tells the story of this violence, this sadism, but also of the creativity and craft of shoemakers, and of the common threads that link disparate cultures together. Curated by Yves Sabourin, the selection is a mix of the historical artifact, with faded 18th-century shoes on display alongside classic Chanel sandals, and the artistic expression, with sculpture, drawings and even video art interpreting the universal fascination with shoes.
Modern-day women have become so obsessed with shoes that they surgically remove excess foot-age that doesn’t fit into their precious Manolos. The stiletto killers are a bitch on one’s joints, but thrusts the wearer into an aggressive, sexual posture, and as uncomfortable as they are, women will never give up their heels and the power associated with them. The ancients didn’t walk too easy either, seen in the inflexible wooden clogs found in Mauritania or the extremely narrow slip-ons worn in Turkey.
Striking examples of the pleasure/pain dichotomy are a tiny 19th-century embroidered shoe that belonged to a little girl in China. It looks like a teacup, very precious and dainty with a small heel. But the foot that had to fit in it must have been mutilated to conform to this thankfully antiquated notion of beauty. More functional mutilation comes in the form of the ballet slipper, which en pointe idealizes the foot as a graceful overextended arch, perched on the tippy toes. Paco Rabanne takes this shape, molds it into a platform of black leather. The effect is vertiginous verticality, and my feet wince in empathy at the same time my mind appreciates this brilliant homage to ballet and its heavenward aspirations, yet rendering the foot completely immobile. These shoes aren’t made for walking, that’s for sure.
Connections are found when the Filipino bakya, Mauritanian clog and Japanese geta are placed side by side. They’re all wood, all worn by women, and all elevate the foot on a pedestal — no explanation is given, we’re left to speculate on these pieces, taken out of context and placed in a new one. Speaking of the bakya, it gets its own special section in the accompanying exhibit “Stepping in Pinoy Style,” the Filipino contribution to this global shoe-case. The bakya, a type of clog that has come to refer to a lower or backwards class, is given its due with a carved and colorful collection courtesy of bakya-fficionados like Ting Ting Cojuangco and Robert Young.
Contemporary designers like Lila Almario, Cesar Gaupo, Emi Jorge, Brian Tenorio, Maco Custodio, Joanna Litton and Kermit Tesoro put their best foot forward with exciting and innovative footwear. My favorites were a shoe by Kermit Tesoro that resembled a robot armadillo with metal rungs and a heel studded with spikes and balls, and Emi Jorge’s which used a five-inch nail for a heel and wraps the foot in body-con bondage-inspired rubber strips. The motif of pain and injury is really brought to the fore here and turning it on its head, because these shoes look more like weapons, designed to self-destruct if anyone tried robbing you of them (à la Sex and the City).
Kidlat Tahimik pens an interesting essay on the installation collaboration with German sculptor Hans Hangerer, bringing us back to the bare foot. “Quo Vadis, Lakaran?” muses on the “endangered barefoot species” of the Ifugao, who had evolutionarily longer toes, the better to grip the mountain rocks with. It was a symbol of tribal freedom. But the “shoe-ing of the natives” was one of the first steps of cultural colonization. The installation consists of 180 pairs of shoes made by 42 wood carvers around Baguio, who were commissioned to create something new, and not just copy souvenirs for tourists. The result is a celebration of local artisanry, fashion, and the imagination set free, but also a comment on the death of the bakya industry, the effects of globalization on small pockets of culture, and of course, on the symbolic power of shoes.
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Portraits of Shoes — Stories of Feet will be on view until June 20 at the Yuchengco Museum, RCBC Plaza, cors Ayala and Gil Puyat Avenues, Makati. Opening hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Mondays to Saturdays.
