Que Horror (ART SHOW)

Hello peeps! Just to start this blog. 3 years ago, the southern part of the Philippines started its own art fair called "Mindanao Art". This was held in Poblacion, Davao City this year. The exhibitors are collective galleries and groups around Mindanao such as Butuan, Bukidnon, and Cotabato. Therefore, Sining Mata is one of the art galleries that participated in this event.

Mindanao’s narrative has always been riddled with uncertainties, of ineffable lust for self-determination and self-affirmation, and of contradictions that present the good and the bad on both side of the spectrum. The island’s complexity is borne out of a deliberate attempt by an imperial mindset to shift the narrative according to its whims, and thus lost Mindanao’s sense of being. Such narrative, which feeds on an imperialist view of dominance and supremacy, etched an indelible and traumatic mark in an otherwise colorful tapestry of Mindanaoan identity.

Sining Mata, an independent Tagum-based art gallery, banks on this unspeakable trauma as a by-product of colonization, how it was inherited from generation to generation, and how wounds that have gone too deep and have taken hold can never be assuaged. The colors of tradition are thus muted by intrusion, and Mindanaoan ancestors were forced to dance to a rhythm against their will.

This exhibition attempts to tickle the imagination of present-day Mindanaoans, and to ultimately make sense, no matter how slow, of this trauma. Taj Hassan Tadeo’s Promise X my Heart offers a hint by castigating the viewer’s divided consciousness through the mythical manananggal, in a clever attempt to force us to find ourselves, affirm our identity, and confront ourselves with the horrors of the past. Inspired by the Bud Dajo Massacre in 1906, Victor Augustus Dumaguing’s Masks and Thorns is a haunting reminder of a troubled past that seems to be in its infancy, while Juan Leonardo Atienza’s Lot for Less elucidated how the imperialists exploited the Lumad’s lands in exchange of cans of sardines. This is also echoed by Broken Descendant and Fall Off by Trexia Sola, whileAlynnah Macla's Whitewash suggests that the perpetuation of this trauma is due to the present generation's indifference by failing to confront the horrors of the not-so-distant past.

A tickled imagination is futile if it does not translate itself to meaningful action. Definitely not for the faint of hearts, Que Horror invites us to confront our past, negotiate with our trauma, and make sense of who we are and what we have become in a world that constantly attempts to deliberately control and distort our collective narrative.

— Louie Bryan Lapat