Bullet with butterfly wings

With its arms outstretched in a huge embrace, Josephine Turalba’s bullet sculpture was given the prime spot at the 12th Cairo Biennale, where it will be on exhibit at the Palace of Arts until Feb 12. A large humanoid installation dressed in billowing blue and yellow armor, the piece is crafted completely out of bullets and spent shells. Try getting that through Egyptian customs without a hitch — it took nearly a month for her box, which contained 20,000 bullets and cans of lacquer, to clear 12 offices, including the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defense, with a final stop at the Bomb Squad, leaving her with but a few days before the opening to install her pieces.

“Ecdysis,” as the series of five sculptures is called, is the shedding of shells and shielding of self, and the continuous negotiation between the two. Turalba draws upon her research on trauma, violence, and the nature of identity, and performs its reconstitution by putting the sculptures on and taking them off, on and off, each a kind of retelling of the event, a revisiting of the place, a reliving of the memory. Turalba’s paintings, videos, performance art and sculptures of the past few years have been dealing with these themes, triggered, as it were, by a trauma experienced and the discovery of a hypersensitivity to violence. “Ecdysis” is also inspired by the symbol of the onion in Toni Morrison’s The Beloved. The skin of an onion, endlessly peeling layers of stories and memories, the process of healing and wounding. The trauma, according to scholar Cathy Caruth, is a repeated suffering of the event, but also a continual leaving of the site.

Once were warriors: The armory references Japanese samurai battlegear.

It was perhaps no accident that when she was spring cleaning one day, during the time she was doing her research, she came across a box of plastic shells from her husband, who goes shooting at the range. He told her not to throw them out because he reuses them. “One day I was looking at them intently, and I started putting them together. He asked me where his shells were, and I said, ‘Oh! They’re here in my artwork, “Turalba recounts. The shells, which she split open and stitched together, form the chain-mail patchwork of the sleeves and skirts of her armor-outfits, while the bullet shafts and its copper parts are sewn into breastplates, bustiers and headpieces. The dresses themselves reference different loci in the histories of violence; one, dripping with red, is based on a 16th century Spanish gown, another, inspired by the winged scarab after an earlier trip to Egypt, and one that looks most like the elaborate costume of a Japanese warrior from the 17th century.

Shell station: “Ecdysis” used 20,000 spent bullets of calibers 45, 49, 38, 9mm, 22, 5.56, 308 and shotgun shells.

This last one, with a conical helmet that covers the face, is the one she took on a taped performance walk through the streets of Manila. “I wanted to elicit feedback from viewers, not make a statement,” Turalba says. “Every time someone asked me what this was for, I asked, ‘What do you think?’” She was moved by some of the reactions. In Quiapo, standing with the vendors with her hand out, people would press a coin into her hand. She made around P50 in an hour. Other folks tried to identify the different bullets, calling out “M16,” “9mm,” or “38,” while a few asked to try it on. She even walked it inside Quiapo Church in the middle of mass, the long tail of her bullet skirt dragging heavily across the floor. She was denied passageway on a bus however. “But sir,” she said, “I’m going to get married across town, this is my wedding dress.” The driver replied, “No ma’am, bawal yung video camera.” When she hit the Makati malls, reactions noticeably changed, turned more hostile and questioning. People thought she was trying to sell something. “Are you promoting war?” someone asked.

Beetle juice:The winged scarab is a symbol of rebirth and reincarnation.

These outfits also took their turn on the catwalk at an art and fashion show last May in Baguio. The models were having difficulty with the dresses, saying they were too heavy. She told them in all seriousness, “Whoever puts this on is not from this earth. This is not just a dress, but something that takes you beyond earthly pleasures.” They must have took her instructions to heart, because when they came down the catwalk, they carried but a sheet of paper.

A sheet of paper, or perhaps the skin of an onion — layers that conceal as they reveal. Her full metal jackets speak of the conflict of armor made out of ammo, a protective case made out of that which kills. “The bullet is just a material. It’s not really about the material, but how you use it,” Turalba explains. “I bring it back to the human being, the one who has the intention. I show not just the destructive nature, but a creative one.” Stripping the ammunition of its violent essence, she imbues it with a transformative force, refashioning memory and meaning. But only for so long: “The memory never leaves you. Like putting on those dresses, it protects you from feelings from the past. But you take it off and put it on. It keeps coming back.”