MOUNTAIN Province artist Rocky Cajigan recently bagged this year’s Fernando Zobel Prizes for Visual Art in the prestigious Ateneo Art Awards.
Cajigan’s piece displayed at the Blanc Gallery, “Museumified” won the nod of the board of jurors when he was nominated, shortlisted and later conferred the annual award.
The 26- year old Cajigan said the exhibit at the Blanc Gallery was his first solo show which was inspired by a friend’s poem, eternally personal and filled with meaning to him which sparked the nomination to his award.
Cajigan’s work is described by the award giving body as a series of assemblages navigating a number of differing identities condensed upon a single space.
The notion of identity is rendered unstable and chaotic; seemingly disjoint objects are brought together in tiny museums of the self and all its contradictions. “Museumified” seems to be working to unfix the notion of a solid, static identity, to represent it as multiple, and fluid — a patchwork of different parts.
Artists Martha Atienza, and Nathalie Dagmang also received an award for this year with writers Pristine de Leon and Dominic Zinampan bagging the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for Art Criticism.
“The works of the three recipients of the prestigious award push the boundaries of the idea of art in this particular age, both in form and function. The selected winners, through their work, simultaneously ask and answer questions about the concept of contemporary art and how it relates to culture at large,” the citation reads.
The young artist
Weeks after the awards and recovering from many victory parties thrown by well meaning friends, Cajigan’s speaks loosely about his piece, relaxed but dumbfounded that attention has been brought to him.
Explaining the stifling feeling one gets when entering a museum with even the air as tense as the pieces displayed in perfection, Cajigan said “it speaks about the mummification of culture.”
Cajigan rues ordinary objects seen at home when taken to the confines of a museum will transform, taking away its hominess and familiarity making it fossilized, detaching it from reality.
The artist grew up in the proximity of the Bontoc museum, which he would venture into as a child, its impression has impacted his career as well as his psyche.
Cajigan left his hometown to start his journey with accountancy but finished with a degree in English, carrying with him remnants of his highland culture and his love for objects which he uses for most of his work.
The masterpiece of Cajigan displays shadow boxes reflecting the culture he has grown with in his Bontoc community as well as the way of life he has lived in the city.
Cajigan explains growing up gay in the highlands has had its own experiences to speak of which in turn ultimately contributed to his growth as an artist. He has always been involved in the arts, participating in group shows or organizing them, working for organizations, eternally immersed into the art scene of the city but choosing not to affiliate with any group.
His favorite pieces involve box construction, which is both figurative and literal for the artist both in meaning and execution setting inside his shadow boxes his found objects and demystifying them at the same time in a bid to bring back the familiar.
Cajigan will forever fight against the boxing up of culture, art and heritage and will iconically use his shadow boxes to do so.
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