The Calmay boy as an artist
By Rex Catubug
TWO large paintings jump at you just right off the entrance of the Anakbanwa exhibit at the newly restored historic WCES HE Building that was Gen Douglas MacArthur’s living headquarters during the Liberation. The exhibit showcases the offshoot of Cong Toff’s PD4 arts and culture initiative.
It is street art commonly boldly brushed on cement walls, now eloquently translated and finding its way mounted in easel, on canvas, or in this case, marine plywood.
The two works portray graphic images that recall Mexican folk art and contemporary cartoons like the Minions.
But they have their own stories to tell. I’m drawn to the one with multi images because it is a collaboration between two youths from Barrio Calmay where I spent my boyhood years.
The painting is composed of various images that Eugene Ravanzo, who collaborated with Gilbert Alegoyojo, says are mirror images of the self or more directly, his diverse persona. They could be the personal demons that surround and populate one’s youth, the monster challenges one has to deal with and overcome as he contemplates his future.
In our time, the boldest statements we made were mere word graffitis etched on desks, corridors and toilet walls.
They represented mostly what was called puppy love. So you have two hearts strung by Cupid’s arrow with a simple outright naive protestation as in Juan loves Maria.
But today, the youth grapples with bigger-than-life issues and concerns that overshadow mundane romantic notions.
In the painting, one sees a figure wearing a face mask, crowded and dwarfed by other images that might be a reflection of the angst, fear, anxiety, and uncertainty that haunt the young in this age of the pandemic.
The youth today live in a complex world draped in various guises of whimsy. But beneath it all, lurk the dark disturbing forces that jar and jolt the balance of yin and yang.
Arts and culture immersions like the Anakbanwa, allow the youth a wide avenue to express creatively their innermost thoughts and repressed feelings and provide an efficacious conduit for hope.
If only for this, the project is off on an inspiring and promising start as it paints, sculpts, installs, and assembles parts and pieces of the future for the young today and the generations to come.
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