In Period Voices, Social Realist Works Still Converse

• Main Author: Daoana, Carlomar Arcangel
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2017
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/paha/vol7/iss1/15; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/paha/article/1228/viewcontent/PAHA_207.1_2015_20Feature_20__20Daoana.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Excerpt: If we are to take the exhibition text as the starting point of Ligalig: Art in a Time of Turmoil, on view at the Ateneo Art Gallery until May 20, 2017, then Pablo Baen Santos’s Alay sa mga Bagong Bayani opens it. The painting could be a veritable allegory of those who have perished in the “war on drugs,” a state-sponsored campaign that began with the installation of Rodrigo Roa Duterte to the presidency. Here we see four dejected figures in their threadbare clothes mourning over a corpse on which the flag has been draped. Behind them, arranged in an arc, are words in uppercase letters that read, as far as one can infer, “HUSTISYA PARA SA MGA BIKTIMA NG . . .” An association between this work, made in 1984, and the recent spate of extrajudicial killings is implied by the exhibition text: “Ligalig, a Filipino word for ‘threat,’ encompasses the themes that continue to be relevant to this day . . .”