Jaime Zobel's meditations beyond the city tunnel

MANILA, Philippines - Tunnels are hardly places that invite contemplation. If they demand any kind of attention, it is for entering and exiting. They are too often poorly lit and, without the city’s bright attractions, we pass through them briefly, with no thought of lingering.

Not so at the Greenbelt Tunnel, its slight curve slowing down for a few moments our passage within Makati, a city known for its hurried pace and brisk connections.

And not especially with the recent mural of photographer Jaime Zobel. These large canvases of bright colors and bold patterns in a tunnel-turned-art-space refuse our easy dismissal. There is an impressive immediacy in the large format.

There, solemn opportunity for thought and appreciation of art takes place against the city’s own chorus of car horns, clicking heels, and construction. Whether walking by or sitting in one’s car while waiting for the traffic light to change, the viewer is invited to regard the diversity that animates Philippine heritage: the various textiles from different ethnic traditions and their unique motifs.

At the same time, the patterning of the collage asserts unity in difference, an idea further reinforced by a short verse that introduces the artwork: “Across the ridges and bridges/of textures and textiles across the regions//One weave/One Song/One Filipino.”

This perspective is especially resonant given the ritual esteem and symbolic dimension of Philippine traditional weaves in our indigenous societies, but which are now on the verge of disappearing because of modernity, and with it the creative ethnic mind.

Apart from being a tribute and a celebration, Zobel’s latest mural attempts to engage the indigenous and handmade with the mechanized and the modern. By the placement of photograph and poem, and the bold contrasts of material and handiwork found in one collage after another, it is also an earnest inquiry into what truly constitutes community in this archipelago, with its marked differences and discontinuities.

The Greenbelt Tunnel is located along Makati Avenue in Ayala Center.