Graffiti Bridge: Pinoys in Italy come together over art at the Venice Biennale

It is a tale of two biennales.

Or to be more precise, it is about attending the vernissage of the Philippine pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in May early this year and learning about how Jose Rizal’s thoughts on home and exile became the foundation of the “The Spectre of Comparison” exhibition, its philosophical backbone. And it is also about going back to Italy at the end of November for the finissage and discovering an entirely new aspect to the biennale.

First is about art, yes: the juxtaposition of artworks by two Filipino artists with a seemingly gaping aesthetic chasm between them (one artist burns with the ideals of punk rock and armed with a visual language festering with scatological humor and horrors of Philippine colonial history; the other artist glows with subtle yet hypnotic use of text, space and the sensual poetry of light) — and how a curator put everything together, like a conductor.

We — Filipino journalists who traveled to Venice upon the invitation of Senator Loren Legarda and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) with the support of the Department of Tourism (DOT), and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) — sat down with artists Manuel Ocampo and Lani Maestro together with curator Joselina “Yeyey” Cruz at the site of the Philippine Pavilion (the Artiglierie, one of the prime spaces for exhibitions inside the Arsenale warehouse) and talked art all day: the goal of retaining the integrity of the space (not one nail was driven into those beautiful old walls; mounting paintings was challenging and ingeniously accomplished), the push and pull of the works of Manuel and Lani who are both operating from and excelling in countries away from their homeland. Not unlike d’original OFW, Jose Rizal.

 “I trusted the works, I trusted the practice, and I trusted the artists,” Cruz explained to the press at the opening of “The Spectre of Comparison.” As many as 7,000 visitors per day have seen the country’s official exhibition since it opened on May 13; those are big numbers. National Artist and NCCA Commissioner Virgilio “Rio” Alma remembered how in 1964, when the country first participated at the biennale, the Philippines had the second-to-the-smallest room next to Syria. The commissioner declared, “(Today, our exhibition space) is as big as our aspirations as a nation.”

So, if the vernissage is about art, the finissage is about people.

When he was 17 years old, Manuel Ocampo found himself working as a cook in a McDonald’s joint in America. Homeless, sleeping in parks, led to a strange land by love. Later on he became a waiter, janitor and — would you believe? — a stable boy: tending horses during the day and painting feverishly at night. Now, Manuel Ocampo has made a name for himself in the US, Europe and, of course, back home — in the same rarified air as one David Medalla.

Lani Maestro left the Philippines at the height of the Marcos dictatorship and continued her work as an artist in Canada and France. In one project she found herself creating an installation revolving around old tools in a jewelry factory in France that was closed down, giving the laid-off workers a reason to reunite, reminisce, recreate, and commemorate a mileage of hands. Lani immortalized their plight in blue neon: “If you must take my life, Spare these hands.” (Si vous devez prendre ma vie, épargnez ces mains.)

These things we learned not during the finissage press conference itself, but over rounds of Spritz, Italian beer, Lays chips and endless laughs (Manuel’s impersonation of a certain lady with a “Crayola” beanie was spot on) at Ai Do Archi and a bar near Santa Maria della Fava church in Venice. There were also much-welcomed and well-attended Artist Talks organized by the NCCA in neighboring Italian cities like Padova and Treviso where we would also meet overseas Filipino workers like Vic Vergara, a factory worker who hails from Laguna, and Kuya Ramon Lagpao. Vic treated us to caffè correto in Padova and talked about his daughter who works in a high-end store in Venice where Pops Fernandez once strolled in. A resident of Italy for 28 years already, Ramon — who brought his entire family to the Treviso gathering — told us he would gladly take the day off from work just to drive us to Verona. That’s Filipino hospitality for you.

Vic, Ramon, Darwin Gutierrez (head of the Filipino community org in Venice), John Nobelo Reyes, caterers Jun and Marites Respicio made up just a handful of many Filipinos who showed up to hear Manuel, Lani and Yeyey talk about the Philippines’ participation at the Venice Biennale, their own respective practices as artists, insightful origin stories (Hiwaga comics for Manuel, for Lani it was the socio-political milieu), and biographical bits about expatriate artists Maestro and Ocampo who can also be considered overseas Filipino workers, thus the resonance of experiences for the people who attended the talks. 

Manuel shares how his love of Hiwaga and its depiction of aswang, tiyanak and kapre fascinated him. He drew them as a kid so as not to be afraid of them. When he got to the States the man suffered from homesickness and thought of what would encapsulate the Philippines aesthetically. He arrived at the conclusion: “It is the jeepney. It is religious art — when I was young takot ako sa kanila eh, sa mga santong pugot ang ulo. It is the thing sold beside churches — the anting-anting. Those are the things that informed my visual vocabulary. I was so fascinated with the imagery. Those are the things I painted so as not to be oppressed by a more dominant culture. When I was in the States, I really felt alienated. Wala akong boses.” And punk rock — its annihilative sonic assault, its do-it-yourself ethos and iconography — gave a voice to Ocampo’s disenfranchisement.

When Lani was growing up, her father was a military man but he never once disallowed his daughter from joining anti-Marcos demonstrations at Plaza Miranda. That was how she learned about respecting one another’s beliefs and opinions. As a kid she loved to write. “I was drawn to words,” she explained. “For me, words are images.”

Art, sometimes, becomes more profound when it entices the unplanned, the specter of the accidental. An amusing thing happened during the biennale run of “The Spectre of Comparison”: one visitor either drew something or wrote a message on one of the wooden benches that are part of Maestro’s “meronmeron” installation, and it started a chain reaction; others followed suit. By the time of the finissage, all the wooden benches had been festooned with graffiti, stickers, ciphers, codes, heart drawings, assorted scribbles and messages (in different languages, mind you).

“I know where I am from, but I don’t know where I am going,” wrote one visitor. A message read: “Perdu dans le néant.” (Lost in nothingness.) And… “You must find purpose in the absence of meaning.” “No war!” lamented another.

Lani was surprised by these interventions. “The work has become stronger, fuller, touching. It’s like I’ve relinquished my position as an artist and that continued on for the audience, the public to respond, to participate.” Manuel said he saw someone — probably an artist himself — writing on the bench being swarmed by paparazzi. It became like a “happening.”

They all mirror, in a way, aspects of Manuel Ocampo’s hardcore graffiti-style paintings of cockroach deity, cannibal abstractionists and cartoon immigrants inside the used-to-be-somber Artiglierie as well as Lani Maestro’s neon entreaty on the essentiality of hands.  

It is a story as old as art itself or, seen in another way, how Filipinos survive and thrive abroad (whether in the arts or in other fields):

Show up, make a mark, leave a trail of glitter.

* * *

“The Spectre of Comparison”  — presented by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Office of Senator Loren Legarda with the support of the Department of Tourism (DOT) and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) — was on view from May 13 to Nov. 26 at the 57th Venice Biennale. The exhibition featured the art of Manuel Ocampo and Lani Maestro, and was curated by Joselina “Yeyey” Cruz. The Philippine Arts in Venice Biennale (PAVB) coordinating committee is set to announce the open call for curatorial proposals for the 2019 Venice Art Biennale while preparing for the 16th  International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia with an exhibition to be curated by architect Edson Cabalfin.