Mebuyan, the Tropical, and What Could be the Erotic: A mythography

• Main Author: Benitez, Christian Jil R
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2020
• Subjects: Mebuyan; Filipino contemporary art; tropicality; Filipino mythology; materiality; Creative Writing
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/filipino-faculty-pubs/59; https://archium.ateneo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1058&context=filipino-faculty-pubs
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

The present essay attempts to interrogate the mythic figure of Mebuyan in her refractions, as in Agnes Miclat-Cacayan’s critical and literary engagements, as accompanied by Aster Delgado’s illustration and Sadhana Bux’s From the Womb of Mebuyan (1998); parts of Agnes Arellano’s Tatlong Buddhang Ina (1996), Project Pleiades (2007), and Project Pleiades 2 (2018); Rita Gudiño’s Mebuyan sa Idalmunon (2017); Kublai Millan’s Goddess (2002); and Robert Feleo’s illustration in The Soul Book (1991) and the aforementioned vitrina Mebuyan (2009). While these works differ in their respective media and locations, ranging from portable paper to site-specific ceramic, the navigation of these works and attendance to each of their materiality ultimately proposes a mythographic syncopation: from merely concentrating on the trope that is Mebuyan and toward considering as well her tropicality, that is, her being a trope, as actualized by particular ecologies. This way, another way of seeing is aspired, one that is before the word that is the myth, as to foremostly recognize and perceive instead the material encountered in the present.