Monday, October 16, 2006 Editorial: Art of engagement
THE text message invited the receiver to be at the corner of Sikatuna and Alcohol St. last Oct. 11 for the installation of a street shrine.
As shadows lengthened, the curious summoned by the text message mingled freely with street residents and members of the Lunâ Art Collective.
Students going home loitered just outside the home-cum-office where, a year ago, lawyer Arbet St. Ana-Yongco was shot dead. At the time of her murder, the private prosecutor handled the parricide case against the Philippine Benevolent Missionary Association’s supreme master Ruben Ecleo Jr.
Of that night’s crowd, artist Estela Ocampo-Fernandez of Lunâ recalls: “Students asked what we were doing. They asked who was the woman in the drawing.”
While some bystanders mused aloud to Estela, “birthday ba ni Arbet? Aw, death anniversary diay,” some of the neighborhood children told anecdotes of Yongco, who juggled parenting, lawyering, advocacy and volunteering with local families.
In the soft light emitted by tens of candles burning, the street shrine “Halad alang kay Arbet” became a testament honoring the ideals served in this woman’s lifetime, as well as a vow to continue the collective remembering that resurrects all victims of violence.
Giving face
Who keeps count?
The question reveals not just the danger presented by street crime and the unabated vigilante-style killings in Cebu, pegged at 172 from late December 2004 up to Oct. 9, 2006, according to homicide investigators.
The real horror is that Cebuanos balk at condemning the summary executions.
“Yongco does not really represent all the victims of violence in the city but she makes the best example for bridging the gaps...where this issue is concerned,” comments sculptor and Fine Arts mentor Raymund Fernandez. “Some people believe the most representative victims are (those robbed and murdered by) criminals. Others see the victims as those...killed extra-judiciously by vigilantes. These two viewpoints are philosophically opposite.”
Through the Halad art installations, the Lunâ Art Collective desires to push people to “confront the true nature of this problem.”
Roylu’s resin-reinforced paper-mache skull bristles with matchsticks. “He believed that, just as lighting up a match may set off other matches, one unsolved killing ignites others,” interprets Estela. “Conversely, remembering one killing will cause the remembrance of others.”
A stack of newspapers, with headlines and statistics on the vigilante death toll, attests to Palmy Pe-Tudtud’s observation that, for many Cebuanos, the victims are reduced to newsprint fodder. A day after the Dec. 22, 2004 formation of Cebu City Mayor Tommy Osmena’s “Hunter Team”—police sharpshooters offered cash rewards of up to P20,000 “for permanently disabling or neutralizing criminals”—the street killings of suspected criminals began. Within nine “bloody” consecutive days in 2004, 13 suspected criminals were gunned down in the streets.
Estela’s sketches of Yongco in charcoal, ink and pencil drew a crowd. “It’s important that you know how (the victims) look like,” observes the artist. Many crime victims have no hold on the public beyond the shock and novelty of footages and photographs of their bloodied corpses covered by newspaper.
Why keep count if no one remembers who they were in the first place?
Art’s cry
Lunâ Art Collective, a group of local artists, regularly collaborates to produce art that “validates the importance of local culture as the starting point of art,” observes Raymund.
Roylu comments in his kulturnatibists chat group that Lunâ challenges the traditional focus on art exhibitions that package art as commodity. The “Halad alang kay Arbet” is now at the Manila Metropolitan Museum for the Oct. 19-February 2007 exhibit, “Tipon.”
Along with six other artists’ groups from other regions, the Halad art installations explore art engaging with community concerns. “Our voices will join those who are crying for justice in our country,” writes Roylu. “This is not only the cry in the streets. It is also the cry of art.”
Sharing partner Raymund’s desire to move the Halad installations from the Met to Cebu City’s downtown area and schools, Estela recently told a radio interviewer that, along with other aspects of local culture, she talked to her children about the struggle to uphold the basic right to life.
Asked if she did not consider them too young to be exposed to human rights, Estela said they need not be exposed to the gore. “But even at a young age, children should know what’s going on in their communities and start to form an opinion of what’s right and wrong, and what their rights and other people’s rights are.”
