In art history, sculpture has a presence that sears the notions of divinity to sordid humanity.
In ancient Greece, the gods and the bodies of mortals are enshrined in the marble casing, set upon pedestals for worship and wonder.
Sculpture in precolonial Philippines also veers into the fascination for the divine, or at least the otherworldly, the other-human.
The sculptural works are vessels and are messages. With this in mind, one wonders how sculpture is doing these days in a finicky art market.
At the recently concluded MOCAF (Modern and Contemporary Art Festival), sculpture is more of a mass-produced cuteness and magnified toy nostalgia. As with the slew of art fairs, the labubufication and the elevated Funko Pop approach are very much present and, may I say, persistent.
The persistence stems from this emergent consumer power of people who grew up in the latter quarter of the 20th century, when the Philippines was in worse economic conditions. These cute sculptures that can be replicated easily in various iterations are indicators of a relatively strong art market. Yet, at what price? To emphasize the collectability of art, is it akin to a childhood dream of gathering toys? Would toys have the same reverence accorded to them as monumental sculptures of the past?
Yet, I should not relegate such aesthetics to be cast aside. There is a disturbance even among the cuteness. One work is Chano’s Chaos: False Idol. The exhibition note suggests that this is a visualization of a trickster-like god, highlighting the overlap between worship and consumerism.
Posing in a cruciform, Chaos: False Idol has a sinister grin as it looks down upon those who worship it. The bold black outlines make the sculpture cartoon-like and ironic, as it is 3D, but there is a certain flatness to it, which is a crucial take on the simplification of our relationship with the divine these days.
Amidst the maniacal grins and puffed-up cheeks of cuteness, there is the work of the newly installed Dean of UP Fine Arts, Toym Imao, who answers to the call of traditional sculpture, magnification of an ideal, or rendering a pressing issue into a monument.
Debugging features women picking on each other’s brains as if taking out the lice, or as Imao jokingly says, “lies.” The women are dressed in traditional garb, which can be considered Inang Bayan across the ages. They wear spectacles that shift technology across the ages, ending with the latest VR visor.
I like that the smallest and most vulnerable in the sculpture is a figure of a little boy being taken care of by a string of matriarchal guidance and care. In political art, Inang Bayan is a figure of a rallying call for the nurturing of the nation.
The delousing of each other is an act of communal cohesion, protecting the health of society. To pick at the brains in these days of fake news and propagated lies is indeed a monumental task.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social
