Re-freshing Bodies

Last March 1, Monday, ten artists; Aj Tolentino, Aza Mazon-Camps, Benay Reyes, Ivy Universe Baldoza, Joana De Leon-Hoffman, Ligaya Domingo, Lydia Cabasco, Maan De Loyola, Tif Guevara and Rimaq Palma showed up with their works at the exhibit in celebration of the Womyn's Month.

It's very interesting to gather womyn for an exhibit because there's always something new to find. The artists used a rich variation of media, wood, plaster, fabric, oil and acrylic paints, pencils and ink. All unified by the theme of the exhibit: sexuality, sensuality and womynhood inspired by the book, Women Who Run with the Wolves written by Clarissa Pinkola-Estes. All in contemplation of what it means to be in a womyn's body.

For an exhibition that was only organized within a month, the turn out of the works were amazing. Considering that there are three working mommies in the group. While everyone else, although without children are perpetually busy with something anyway.

People who came to see the exhibit, or who just happened to be in the Philam Life and looked at the exhibit, expressed their fascination, "an all-womyn exhibit. What is this about?" I guess exhibitions like these, as far as we thought feminist revolution has progressed still doesn't come as easy these days and still strike some kind of exotic fascination to certain people. Especially when you bring womyn to talk about words like sensuality or sexuality.

I find womyns' reflections of their own bodies very distinctive from that of men. I guess I refer to male artists painting womyn's bodies who has spent too much time looking at FHM or Playboy. There is always more depth or more inquiry that is much more familiar, much more real and genuine. I am not saying that all womyn paint like this. I refer to the works of Joana, AJ, Maan and Benay here. It's a very refreshing feeling.

Unearthing the hearth of the feminine

Unearthing: Womynist Bones and Sexuality-Unearthing the hearth of the feminine. When the river does not run,rest awhile, rip through reality, rake up the rust, embrace what you’ll find. Reclaim and from there, a hope to redeem radiance.

Ten artists run and rhyme with one another as they uncover and recover the feminine in “Unearthing:Womynist Bones and Sexuality”, an exhibit of paintings, sketches and installations on March 1-14 at the Philam Life Center for the Arts, United Nations Avenue, Ermita, Manila.

Unearthing: Womynist Bones and Sexuality features the works of AJ Tolentino, Azalea Mazon-Camps, Benay Reyes, Ivy Universe Baldoza, Joana De Leon-Hoffmann, Ligaya Domingo, Lydia Cabasco, Maan De Loyola, Rimaq Joaquin Palma and Tif Guevara- a group of artists from and of different backgrounds prime a range of works to provoke and evoke the woman within.

A celebration of International Women’s Month, the exhibit aims to commune with the woman in each one in order to facilitate dialogue on women’s realities- unearthed in the eyes of these ten artists. A take-off from Clarissa Pinkola- Estes’ book, Women Who Run with the Wolves, these artists procure arresting sections as they translate their own visual and tactile narratives. The works in turn, aspire to stir and spur awareness from the audience and elicit response to the different issues and archetypes associated with the woman, her processes, truths and ideals.

Benay Reyes

Unearthing: Womynist Bones and Sexuality

UNEARTHING
Womynist Bones and Sexuality

Buried under the dark crevices of our time’s hegemonies are yet tender fossils – muted, maimed, and mutilated – muffled in their screaming silence, cocooned within the gravels of subjugated worldings. But not for long…

Ten womyn womynists piece together a fearless, undulated bellowing; an eloquent kind of unearthing, to unravel bones of feminine beauty and pain, to reconstitute their place in time and space, both real and virtual. To unearth is to reveal quieted identities in a more gaping dimension to which their osseous seeds could be nourished into fertile germs – progenitors, potent and sexual so that the once faint diffusion of voices could reverberate into a piercing chorus, lyric and erotic, vivid and provocative.

This spirited collective choreography gathers in a wall’s span and in a sweeping gaze a cross-section of ideas that could somehow begin to articulate, but not to frame, the womyn’s emancipation into the breathing space of expression, unstruggling, ungasping and basking in the free air.

In their concoction of old and new media, the ten artists may have come from different milieus and cultivate different modes of artistic engagement. Yet they speak in unison as they spark this provocation to take a focal look at the feminine from her periphery. Through the poignant womynly expression, Benay Reyes bares a subtle, primordial injustice that seems to have haunted the womyn during the expanse of HIStory. She invites us to go back, look back and re-align our gaze at HERstory. Ligaya Domingo and Maan de Loyola project contrasting styles of abstractions to show a single theme: societal imbalance, the longing for human rights and social justice. AJ Tolentino makes use of both arcane myths and mass-produced pop cultural hegemonies to position the womyn in both the ancient and the current. Tif Guevara and Ivy Universe Baldoza works with every conceivable medium and form to attack the feminist subject, creating rich juxtapositions of metaphors pertaining to the feminine’s “universe” of concepts. Joan de Leon Hoffman paints it dark and real to intimate what to her are her womynist realities. Lydia Cabasco ventures into 3D spaciality through installation and collaborates with Tif Guevara as they render subliminal connections between art and the subconscious. They draw inspiration from myths and the archetype of the “skeleton woman” to explore the cycle of life, death and life. Aza Camps and Rimaq Palma complete this initial performance of unearthing with works challenged and stirred by the womyn’s sexual politics.

Longing for tender caresses, these painful yet beautiful “bones” resuscitate in these walls, their nursery beds; with the intimate light as their sun and your thoughtful gaze as their consummate lovers, sensually stroking with the eye, afflicting and loving.

In indigenous lore, women priestesses danced and stomped the earth’s virginal orifices amidst sacred chants and prayers, to awaken the soil and welcome the seeds that soon may grow into life. Now, bones become seeds of intention. Such skeletal undertakings begin the nurturing process of interrogation to amplify the actualities of the womyn, unearthed.

Behold, here unfolds a resurrection.

JOSEPH MICHAEL T. PATRICIO
kupityo@gmail.com