Art as a Vehicle for Change

CEBU, Philippines — In a December 31, 1972 published interview with the Los Angeles Times’ John Gruen, American pianist, composer and educator Leonard Bernstein clinched the very essence that puts value in art.

Quipped in a time when the onset of the contemporary arts movement was underway, the maestro (who garnered awards and accolades for composing the music of well-loved musicals like the “West Side Story”) cleared the air over what the value of art has become – setting art’s proper place in a time wherein creative expression was taking a backseat to crass creative commodification.

This view on art – its propensity and potential for change – served as the binder of a recent exhibit in Cebu. Titled “Musings On Women” and held at the Activity Center of the Ayala Center Cebu on November 24 to 26, the show featured artworks and photographs that celebrated the many roles that are played by women in contemporary society.

Reinforcing the fact that there’s more to women than being the heart of a household through paintings and photographs, the show was more than a simple exhibition of its exhibiting talents’ technical ability and skill, as it pointed to visual art’s capacity to call for shifts in the way one perceives the world.

Reminding viewers that the days when women were perceived as second class citizens are long gone, the show’s curatorial stance intimated that though traditional gender roles in society are still there, these are simply norms not inhibitors that restrict women from doing what they can and cannot do.

As a highlight of the recently established “Abay sa Kahayag” campaign by the Zonta Club Cebu II and the City of Mandaue, the exhibit stood by the campaign’s stance to forgo outmoded views towards women – well aware that the exhibit itself was not the answer to the campaign’s goals but the change in people it inspired, reshaping the world into something that is bolder, better and brighter.