There is a cultural compounding of the anik-anik, with appendages like keychains and other ornaments dangling at your behest to signal your alleged whimsical personality. Urban Pinoy Gen Z-ers and Gen Alphas claim the anik-anik as part of their “core.” However, I argue that the term anik-anik has been making the rounds from the queer margins since the 1980s and 1990s. Anik-anik is, or was, a testament to struggle.
The anik-anik is a queer term of either (1) whatever works or (2) gather as we go—a lack of resources and limited access to spending capacity frame this. Anik-anik is a queer iteration of bahala na (come what may), but in an active mode wherein one has to be open to responding and relying on their surroundings.
Back in the day, there were several events where pageantry was involved, and the budget was severely curtailed. Anik-anik is invoked as a means of establishing presence. Packets of junk food become ruffles. Recycled plastic bottles become flowers as décor for your bulletin board. Old newspapers become the fabric for a ball gown. Anik-anik is about being resourceful and transformational to be seen. This has been recently trivialized as an aesthetic of cuteness.
The recent Art Fair Philippines has a glut of cuteness and magnified expensive bric-a-bracs (you know, that’s sosyal for anik-anik). As you weave through the event with the best that the Philippines offers, you can see the utter chokehold of the Pop Mart look in many galleries. At every turn, a toy figure is “elevated” as art. The Funko-popification of many young Pinoy artists responded to the clarion call of the market of the new collectors who grew up acquiring toys, cards, and whatnot.
With the power of nostalgia and cuteness, the art market, according to Art Fair Philippines, is replete with figures from Saturday TV cartoons. This is the anik-anik in the art wherein you recalibrate cuteness and say it is personal expression, but it is just a Fabergé egg with big round eyes.
Is this the contemporary that Philippine art can offer? Numerous works at the Art Fair truly deserve accolades. Yet, one cannot shake the nagging feeling that many artworks here are manufactured to be part of Instagrammable moments. How many selfies have you seen of visitors making bloated cute faces alongside the anik-anik of Art Fair Philippines? That should deserve an entire exhibit of its own.
Hand in hand with anik-anik is the tingi-tingi (piecemeal). One of the most popular exhibitions at Art Fair Philippines is Carlo Tanseco’s Sari-Sari Sabi-Sabi, which is a collection of magnified sculptural pieces of food typically found in corner stores (sari-sari) and also the go-to fare for those who are on a tight budget. Tanseco’s suite of works proved to be the most viral on social media, garnering several smiles from the visitors.
Though his works veer into the anik-anik approach, these magnifications of cheap junk food are, in fact, giant testaments to positive approaches to life’s struggles. Lucky Me Pancit Canton is having its moment as it is being dubbed one of the best instant noodles by the venerable New York Times. But with Tanseco, these bright packets of anik-anik products become calls for proactivity (Looking for a Sign. This is it, Pancit) and patience (Life’s not like instant noodles, so be patient).
One of the roles of art is not to decorate but to give the audience pause and to relish the messages the artwork has to offer. Tanseco did just this with anik-anik, which is not to trivialize struggle but to help us see through the hardships.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social