Wit and irony sometimes define the Cebuano notion of the beautiful. You see that often in our literature, radio drama and popular music. Yet it seems to be missing in our visual arts today, which continues to be identified with the nostalgic pastoral paintings of the Martino Abellana school.
Thus, wanting to reflect native tonque-in-cheek sensibility in local contemporary art, we formed last year the group Wawart, which is named after the Cebuano street word for “money.” To the bisdak ear, it can also mean “wow art.”
And so art and money are implied in the name, which came about after we just played with any word that has “art” in it, whether Cebuano or English, hoping to find something to call our group. “Wawart” sounds good and reflects street smarts.
Modernist critics frown upon commercialism as an aberration of art. They draw a line between art and money. One is good, the other is evil.
Pop art in the 1960s liberated art from such dualistic thinking. Andy Warhol threw away his paintbrush and started painting soup cans, soap boxes and photos of celebrities using silk screen method, which left no trace or “gesture” of the artist’s hand.
In the spirit of self-irony, the pop artist then neither endorses nor rejects commercialism. Through exaggeration, we are forced to confront the reality of mass culture. But it makes no clear pronouncements and leaves it to the viewer to see for himself.
Contemporary thought has already abandoned the easy dichotomies in favor of ambiguity and paradox. You cannot simply dismiss things as either good or evil, beautiful or ugly, high or low. The lines between them are not always fixed. There are always a range of tones between black and white.
With this in mind, we formed Wawart and adopted the tagline “No money in art.”
Yet our very first activity was to join an art fair where we put up a booth and sold drawings, paintings and prints. We could have sold Wawart-branded items like shirts, mugs, stickers and pins if we had more time or handed out business cards like sales agents to every person who dropped by our booth, which was marked with our logo and slogan.
Everyone was instantly amused or perhaps confused by it seeing that we are ironically doing the hard sell at the art fair. Or that we looked like total sellouts or griping amateurs.
Indeed some fellow artists approached us to pat our backs saying we just had to persevere as money and fame will surely come in due time. We just smiled and nodded. But when asked about the slogan, we chose not to make any clear answers.
As I write this in Saturday, we are about to open our first show titled “Sawum: Into the depths and the elemental” at the Maribago Bluewater Gallery. The gallery’s beach setting, where sky, sea and shore meet in the horizon, becomes the very inspiration for the theme that, according to the exhibit statement, “attempts to explore what lies under the currents of how we look at nature and how this understanding have come to shape who we are.”
Thus, the title “Sawum” or “dive” in Cebuano “suggests this desire of the artist to fathom the unknown.” It also “implies an attempt to cut through the literal” by avoiding the “pedagogical tendencies of environmental art.”
The exhibit showcases a diverse mix of styles and media. Aside from wall-bound paintings, collages and prints, it also includes video art, sculptures, indoor and outdoor installations.
And adding ironic twist to the first exhibition of this still-unheard-of organization was the presence of Miss Universe 2011 3rd runner-up Shamcey Supsup, who was invited by the gallery to lead the opening ceremony.
So we had a rare privilege to have a celebrity endorser for our first show from the beauty queen who is herself an artist (she topped the architecture board exam and was seen on TV showing her paintings decorating their house). So beyond the pretty face, the girl has depth that may be hard for any of us to fathom. That goes with most of life where art is a kind of dive.
“Sawum” is open to the public by appointment (just call 492-0100 local 100) and runs through Jan. 3 next year.