Atras Abante - Puro Arte

PURO ARTE and KITAKITS are pleased to present ATRAS ABANTE: Filipinotown History Reimagined, a group exhibition of contemporary art by FilipinX American visual artists: Ferdinand Agriam, Cirilo Domine, Marlon Fuentes, Maryrose Mendoza, Christine Morla, Chris Sicat and Rey Zipagan.

ATRAS ABANTE: Filipinotown History Reimagined is organized by Tala Oliver Mateo, Artist and Curator of KITAKITS-Visual and Reuben Domingo, Curator & co-founder of Puro Arte Gallery & Performance Space in partnership with Regis House Community Center. This collaborative art experience project is an initiative to partner with local community organizations and businesses within Historic Filipinotown.

Freddie

Originally from Delano, California, Ferdinand “Freddie” Agriam moved to Palm Springs, California. He attended California State University, Long Beach, and worked as an art assistant for Ed Moses and Manuel Ocampo. Influenced by Dada and Fluxus approaches to art, Ferdinand set these ideas into practice with the Fil-Am art collective Grupo de Gago. He resides in the desert near Palm Springs. As a multimedia artist, he continues to practice the conceptualist tradition.

Cerilo Domine

Encyclopedic rather than serial, Cerilo Domine’s works point to an exchange and reciprocation to the many cultures and spheres he is part of. Visually and culturally crossing bridges, he negotiates and recognizes the absences in history, and consciously translates and mistranslates systems and forms to create new subjectivities.

Marlon Fuentes

This current work continues my exploration of photography as a tool of connecting (and simultaneously flattening) historical evidence (i.e., in the case, the “art” object) and using its unique taxonomic capabilities to interrogate our relationship with constantly shifting epistemologies of media and culture. How do we even identify the estuaries where exogenous and endogenous ways of knowing affect each other? How and where does emotion intersect with perception? How do we, as consumers of the image, engage with the ever increasing visual effluence made possible by technology? And how does art-making, as a practice and tradition, insert itself in this potentially asymptotic voyage to numbness and apathy (masquerading as knowledge and progress)? Even better, does this practice have any special claim to a moral dimension, or will it to be totally subsumed by the digestive cilia of our consumptive and regurgitative appetites?

Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza

In indigenous Philippine culture, the term Kapwa translates as “shared being.” It is a value that connotes togetherness and interdependency. The reverence for harmony and a holistic approach to life is echoed in the artist’s interest in Buddhism and in the concept of “inter-being.” Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza uses linear perspective to explore ideas of how we establish viewpoints and form perspectives on the world. Medoza appropriates the classic Coca-Cola font and signature ‘swoosh’ to incorporate 1960s pop culture, Warhol, and Filipinos’ historical attachment to Coke and all things American.

Christine Morla

Initially inspired by the agricultural landscape of Oxnard, “Pink Sky Over Strawberry Field” is a mixed-media painting made up of hundreds of weaving and floral-like paper constructions. The Oxnard Plain has long been known and used for its rich soil and as of recent, its most popular crop being strawberries. Born and raised in Oxnard, the artist Christine Morla is interested in translating the daily language of open space against the vibrant palette found in agriculture.

Chris Sicat

Chris Sicat obsessively and meticulously covers pieces of preserved redwood with graphite using hundreds and or thousands of pencils per each piece. Applying several layers of graphite per sculpture, the redwood develops a silver sheen ultimately giving the piece of red wood a new life.

Rey Zipagan

The Balangiga Massacre is a tragic event of our country’s collective narrative that remains to prevail like a bone lodged of our country’s throat of national consciousness. My Balangiga piece attempt to illuminate the dark shadow of our past with the hopes to reconcile with the present. I believe that the transformative power of images can elevate human tragedy into something that is redemptive. The Balangiga Massacre is an experience that warns us of the uselessness of war and intolerance. Human suffering is the result of hatred and indifference, and our soul is the ultimate victim. These paintings express my voice as a Filipino and as an artist. These paintings also speak about us, the Filipino people who have suffered enough. Our Spirit soars from the ashes of our painful collective experience.

Opening

Conditions (an unrestricted list)

by Napoleon Lustre (read by the poet as part of the closing program of Atras Abante)

You are Pilipino

if your mother is Pilipina
if your father is Pilipino
if you are from ‘pinas’
if you have one drop of Pilipino blood.

You are Pilipino

If you’re Chinese but are from the Philippines
or if you’re only ½ or 1/3 or any 1/fraction
and your last name is Tan, Ong, or Chua
and you constitute the less-than-1%
of the native population
who control more-than-50%
of the national commerce.
Unless you’re Chinay or Chinoy
And you’ve never known anything else
and you will refuse to conflate
the Chinese Filipinos
with capital,
the kind of conflation that
all-too-easily
slides into corrupt kidnappings,
governmental financial blackmailings,
periodic ethnic cleansings,
and other types of domestic horrors…

You are Pilipino

even if you deny it
because your parents, or theirs, or theirs
are Español, mga Kastila
who settled in las islas Filipinas
named after your king, once.
My father, too, is named Felipe
part Portugués
but mostly from tall
bug-eyed Malays
with high noses and wavy hair.
I don’t know how many generations they have been
On these arbitrary islands that define us
maybe before Biak-na-Bato broke in half
at least before Bernard Carpio pushed his handprints
deep in the flat surfaces to separate the broken boulder.
The jungle has grown into the hollows.

You are Pilipino

if you are descended from the children of the Spanish friars, priests, and other unholy men.

You are Pilipino

if your mother was an American base hostess
and your eyes are green
or any shade lighter than black, really
and your last name is Murphy, Sullivan
or even Brown.

You are Pilipino

it doesn’t matter if you’ve been whitewashed by blood or culture
so bleached out you don’t think twice about blue contact lenses,
affirmative action,
or ski trips to Utah
and you sleep well at nights
with all the alien consonants in your mouth.

You are Pilipino

if you are Black
because your mother
or your father
is from America
of African ancestry
or your mother
or your father
is Negrito
or your mother
or your father
is from America
of Negrito Ancestry.

You are Pilipino

If you are part Japanese
Even though your father
Was the fruit of betrayal
Less than human, they called him
And your grandmother killed herself
After a lifetime as the local loka
Since the execution of her soldier/invader/lover.
Unless you are from Hawaii
where your grandfather joined your grandmother
against the white plantation owners.
There are those who say
that’s what the wars
were always about
anyway.

You are Pilipino

if you are ½ Mexican, ½ Flip
that west coast Catholic mix
like the Irish-Italians back east.
My friend Tony’s folks are both Mexipinos
met and married in Oxnard.
Tony always says he has two reasons
to boycott grapes.

You are Pilipino

if you know
that history docked on our islands
long before any pale giants’ boats ever got close
and history docked there
made home there
ever since.
Yes, if you know that
and if you know
that history has been leaving
ever since
for the next boontown
in Papua New Guinea
Saudi Arabia
Hong Kong
Tel Aviv
Montreal
Hilo
Maybe even Ho Chi Minh City
or Anchorage
or Los Angeles
to dock there and stay
wondering about those islands
that once had no name.

You are Pilipino

if you left
and have never made it back
and you think you will die
with only a child’s memory
of how the air smells
the 1st day
after the typhoon has passed
and in a week the mud
will still squeeze between your toes, red
but smooth and heavy
like the Duncan Hines frosting
for a dollar thirty-nine
at the Korean store
down the block
from the Rampart Police Station
in P-Town.

You are Pilipinx

because you refuse
to be male
or female
anymore
but instead claim
and own your space
something like both
or neither
and you will make room
now
for the task of making
this mental readjustment
go global
and this global readjustment
go mental.

And yet of course
Yes, of course
You are Pilipina
even if you’re half-German
(not your fault)
and you bear
our weighty burden of beauty
and so you nab
the third, yes
people, count them,
third
Miss Universe crown…
who cares if we waited so many years,
and who cares that that
asshole Trump produced the event…
It’s not like we needed
to remind the planet that we
are some of the most gorgeous things
that ever walked this earth
and swam its waters.
Yassss, there, I said it.
Please do take note that
that’s coming
without irony
whatsoever
from someone who is
wholeheartedly against
racial-cheerleading,
if all the aim
of your goddamned identity politics
is to feel good
about yourself.

You are Pilipinx because

you are an artist
a poet
a thinker
and for some reason
you feel the firm grasp of this
our fact
around your very being,
and you can disappoint
neither duty
nor destiny
and the only thing holding you back
is the length of time
it will take
to figure out
what material
you can muster
out of all this
garbage
and all these memories.
And finally then
there’s still
that undying question
of what exactly
will come out
at this said moment
of your much-anticipated
Utterance.

You are Pilipino

even though you
still haven’t gone back
In what might be
42 years too late
but fuck it,
you are still alive
and you are still here
at this place
now
and you are still here
at this time
and you are still so so far
from being done
bearing witness
to this life
and to this city
and to the world
and all its ravishing grandeur
and all its ravaging greed
and all its punishing hunger
and you are still pleading
with Providence
for salvation and deliverance.
Yes, do or die
or do and die.
This is all you know
about how it’s done.
This,
Is really all.
This is really all.
It’s all you know about how it’s done.

Closing

ATRAS ABANTE kolectivos: Chris Sicat, Christine Morla, Cirilo Domine, Edwin Ramoran, Freddie Agriam, Haydee Vicedo, Irene Suico Soriano, Jilly Canozares, Marlon Fuentes, Maryrose Mendoza, Reuben Domingo, Rey Zipagan, Tala Mateo, Tellie Custodio. Additional by Ron Tamara.