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| Photo by Mark Salvatus |
I visited Egai Fernandez while he was de-installing his solo show, “Kalayaan At Iba Pang Kwento Sa Kanto” at Kanto Artist Run Space; then he took me through the history of his art practice from 70s up to today.
(September 25, 2013, Interviewer: Mayumi
Hirano)
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You
co-founded two progressive artist groups in 70s and 80s, respectively Kaisahan
and Concerned Artist of the Philippines. I would like to know about the social
and climate atmosphere of the time for artists? Why did you decide to be an
artist?
I'm still trying to be an artist. I don't
know. When I was young like 3 or 4 years old, my mother said I could draw, not
stick figures, but the images of calesa (horse drawn cart) with perspective.
After I took a vocational course in drafting, I didn’t think I would go to a
higher education. My mother didn't want me to go to the University of the Philippines
(UP), because at that time it was the height of activism. Anyway, I ended up
going to Philippine Women’s University (PWU), College of Music and Fine Arts in
Manila. Fortunately that was a good choice. You can imagine the whole building
had only a total number of 30 students.
I had my first one man show in 1974. I was 19.
It was in a Community Chest Foundation building beside PWU, because I was also
into civic work. Contributing my time to do documentary photography for medical
missions in the provinces, especially in areas where there is no doctor. Every
summer from 1974 to 1976, my friends and I would be doing volunteer work and I
take pictures of the area. I would do the touristic photos of landscape and people
to show the problems to nursing and medical students of UP and other schools. We
also told them that you could do your vacation at the same time doing something
for the community.
We had medical students, engineers and
different professionals coming with us, depending on the situation of the
communities that we visited. All of us were young and wanted to do something about
the problems in the country. I would be going around the designated areas,
taking photos, teaching the nurses how to take pictures and develop the films for
printing. It was really interesting. There was of course a backside to this
too. Every time we would go to the countryside, military would follow us. They think
we were rebels. We didn’t know anybody in those communities. So for instance,
we went up there for the first time, to the barangay, talked to the leaders and
elders and they would accept us. So next time we go in, the military would be
suspicious of us, especially because we were going to remote places in the
mountains, which could take hours of walking to reach.
Was
freedom of expression protected by the law? Did artists feel safe to show their
works in the public?
Under the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, a
presidential decree (PD 868) was issued, requiring that a branch of government will
have to read first the scripts for movie and theater plays before moving onto
the production. The artists felt that was going too far.
Of course we called it censorship, but the
government said the purpose was to safeguard the morals in the society. They had
their own ways of explaining things. They would say it’s the new society of
Marcos. Marcos abolished the congress and the senate, and closed down the
newspapers that criticized his regime. They would say that Martial Law is good “oh,
that's a good thing, now we are going to be disciplined.” Nobody was allowed to
go out after 10pm until 4 O’clock in the morning. And during the curfew hours,
nobody except the police and military would be walking on the streets.
During curfew hours the only happy person I
knew was the balut vendor. He told me
a story during the first time curfew was implemented. He was walking outside
and nobody was buying his balut. Of
course, no one was allowed to go out, so he was caught by the police. He had no
excuse. The next day he was released. On the following night, he brought with
him two baskets of balut, and he
looked for the police. Why? Because inside the jail, there were lots of people
who don’t have anything to eat, and only his balut was available, so he asked the police to bring him to jail
again. He made more money. Other than him, most people were very unhappy.
We made murals for demonstrations but we need
to be fast when making it in the public space. The police and military would arrest
you if you are more than 5 people gathering around in the street without any
permit. Or if you are a male and have a long hair, the military will cut it. If
they get annoyed by you, they can just pick you up, and considered lucky should
you be recovered by your family.
Anything
you would do could risk your life… What kind of artworks were you making at
that time?
I was working on more abstract works for interior
design. At that time I didn’t believe that you could change society just by
painting protest art. I reshaped the canvases into modular paintings so that
you can interact with the painting. This was a sort of my suggestion that we
should interact with the community and government, but of course I didn’t
expect my abstract paintings would convey my motive behind it.
One of my early water color works from 1974 was
about my friends who were put into jail. They used to be part of an action
group with me. We would talk to the community about security, peace and order,
and share food with them. I didn’t know that they were part of the underground
movement. I became more politically aware after I learned my friends were tortured
and put in jail.
As the collective, Kaisahan, we made murals for the community, labor organizations and
church people. We were also doing design works. We set up a quasi advertising
agency to meet the needs of political campaigns by different sectors, because
there were many things going on at that time, and the political organizations needed
posters.
In 1983 I became the president of the Art Association
of the Philippines (AAP). The year 1983 was a focal year for artists, the Free
the Artist movement was organized, which became the Concerned Artists of the
Philippines (CAP) three months before the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr. in
August 21, 1983. A campaign “Justice for Aquino and Justice for All” was
launched with artists and civil society.
We were producing murals at that time
averaging from 2 to 3 murals a month. Sometimes our painting would be the size
of a basketball court. That was really a fun experience. That time we have 30
people painting the mural. Of course you don't see the whole image. You can
only see sections, and while painting suddenly you realize you are caught in
the middle of mural, which is still newly painted and wet. So you just have to wait
until it gets dried. Somebody would climb up to the roof with a binocular and
use the binocular backwards to check the perspective and say OK.
How
did you guys come up with a design for murals?
Collectively. All of us usually make sketches
to be combined to make one picture. Then we cut them into pieces to be assigned
to each member. Sometimes we painted it in one place, but other times we
painted in several places and connected them together at the site of the rally.
Sometimes we would use craft paper so that people can rush through it. That’s
part of the rally.
Do
you have any documentation of these rallies?
I think the press photographers would have it.
We are busy painting, makes us forget to document the mural; sometimes we do get
to shoot them in the midge of the rallies. Most of the times my friends would
be painting the image of the rallyist facing the activists, but it’s not the
real experience. You are not in front or separate from the activist groups, but
you are part of them. You see the
military and the riot police facing you. Sometimes I could see one of my neighbors
on the oppressor’s side. Then he saw me. He is part of our church community. He
has to follow the orders. So I portrayed him with a blank look when he looked
at me. I made several paintings like that. They are also people. They are
military but they are also people. They are caught in between.
Even my friends would say that the rally will
be a peaceful one but they would always bring bags with home-made bombs inside.
They would use the pill boxes as a defensive device to stop the advance of the
riot police. They always kept them in their bags, sometimes even in my bag.
To me collective activity was a happy one,
because you are giving something while getting something. It was a learning
experience. Even though you have bad
experience it is part of your life’s evolution.
As
an active artist, you have witnessed the changes in politics and society in the
last four decades. Do you have any advice for younger generation of artists in
the Philippines?
I would say when we were doing art we were
more focused in the sense that we knew what we were doing and what for. We
would be discussing about our problems in the country, especially when I had
the chance to go visit different countries. Artists from other countries were
just like me too. We were painting or producing artworks that discussed local
experience.
What’s the identity of a Filipino? It was a
big question for me and for the group. So what we did was to literally paint
the Filipino experience. Of course we had different kinds of style; each one
has to develop its own. The political situation just happened to be like
that. You have to adapt, get the symbols
of the day to day reality. We couldn’t go back to the tribal communities to
find our identity, because we were not from the tribal community. So what we did
was to paint more of the contemporary events. I learned a lot from the tribal
communities but I am not part of them, in a way. So I just tried to paint the
experience of my family, community and social issues around me.
It’s very inspiring
to see your artwork here in Kanto in this compound frequented by young
designers and street artists.
That's why I wanted to show my works here. It's
new and with younger audience and it makes me feel young also. They would call me kuya. Good enough. As an artist and as
a cultural worker, sharing to young ones the struggle to express our identity
in art is rewarding enough.
Art practice is not just painting for money or
to be well known. Primarily it is a passion to practice the language of your
heart that seeks the truth around or within us. To seek justice and peace, to
say no to violence and to learn to love others is what I want to portray in my
art works. The world may seem too
complex to understand. In fact, it is us
who made it too complex and then we got lost in its complexity. But a closer look would tell us that the
world is made up of energies, positive and negative energies. While it is not a simple black and white; we
could learn from it and use it properly. The same thing can be said about
money. If you know how to use it, it’s good. It is also a kind of energy that we
can use. As well as in art, it can be a
tool to show realities and dreams, for us to move and change things that may
not be good for us.
I think I’m lucky in a sense that we are
witnessing a lot of changes and moving into a time when people are looking into
their spirituality. Seeking a better life and work for positive things for the society
x
Edgar
“Egai” Tulsan Fernandez was born in 1954. He took Bachelor of Fine Arts at the
Philippine Women's University. He met Nena during the production of 'Pasko sa
Ilaya' (in Tondo, a play written by Elynia Mabanglo, and produced by Sining
Batarisan in 1975). Egai and Nena have two children: Malaya, resident artist at
Sofitel, and Diwa, a freelance web designer.
Fernandez played a
prominent part in the long history of social realist art in the Philippines. He
was one of the founders of Kaisahan in the mid '70s, some members came from the
Nagkakaisang Progressibong Artista at Arkitekto (NPAA), the visual arm of the
militant leftist organization Kabataang Makabayan. Kaisahan became a mainstay
of the Center for the Advancement of Young Artists (CAYA) that was organized by
Jinky Yap-Morales, estranged wife of Horacio Morales (a top government official
who defected to the revolutionary left in the '70s). Fernandez was a founding
member of Artista ng Bayan (Abay) in 1985, a group that included younger
committed artists. Established to serve as the advertising arm of progressive
organizations, it was responsible for the creation of murals, calendars and
posters for left-leaning non-government organizations. Abay died a natural
death in the early '90s when the Communist Party of the Philippines split into
two factions in 1990’s. Fernandez led the visual art section of the Concerned
Artist of the Philippines (CAP), a coalition of writers, visual artists, film
makers, stage actors and actresses led by writer Pete Lacaba and the late film
director Lino Brocka .
Website: http://egai.box.com.ph/gallery/
© Edgar Talusan Fernandez and the author
© Edgar Talusan Fernandez and the author