(Published in Issue No. 6 of Ctrl+P. To access the entire contents, please visit http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/17531_lzsdc/Ctrl_P_AnniversaryIssue6.pdf)
Birthing women artists:
Norma Liongoren and the Walong Filipina exhibition
For 17 years, the annual Walong Filipina (Eight Filipinas) exhibition of the Liongoren Gallery has collectively shown the works of close to a hundred women artists from the Philippines. Exhibiting the works of eight selected artists annually throughout different venues, the show pays "tribute to the creative contributions of women, who often have to juggle the multiple roles of wife, mother, and artist"1.
Norma Liongoren, gallery owner and curator, asserts that the Walong Filipina show has literally and figuratively gone a long way since it was first held in March 1990 at the Cubao-based art space, a two-storey residential structure converted into a gallery.
"At the time, it was unheard of [in the Philippines]. Now there are more women artists. In a way, inaabangan ito ng mga tao (people look forward to it)," she says of the curatorial gamble. Nearly two decades later, the annual Walong Filipina exhibitions continue to gain acceptance in its attempts to reflect, interrogate, and recreate social realities from the perspective of Philippine women artists.
Periods of feminist interventions
Walong Filipina can arguably trace its ideological roots from the socio-political turmoil of the Martial Law and post-EDSA Philippines2, which was characterized by the upsurge of women's organized and communal interventions in society. The early years of this era saw the births of collective feminist formations, such as MAKIBAKA (organized in 1972) and Gabriela, the largest umbrella organization of Filipino women's groups in 1984. The 1980s to 1990s were marked by more interventions in the spheres of cultural politics, such as the founding of Women Writers in Media Now, Concerned Artists of the Philippines Womens Desk, and the women artists group KASIBULAN (Kababaihan sa Sining at Bagong Sibol na Kamalayan). The contextual conditions of the times led to more women going out, getting involved, and getting together, whether in politics, media, or the arts.
The direct precursor of the Walong Filipina was a five-woman exhibition sponsored by the Liongoren Gallery shortly after the EDSA 1 popular uprising3. By that time, Liongoren Gallery was operating in its 5th year as a commercial and artistic space. Sculptor Julie Lluch came up with the idea of holding an all-woman exhibit, prompting Liongoren to put up a show in March 1986.
This exhibit featured works from who Liongoren considered as "women artists of the hour": Lluch, the late Philippine Association of Printmakers founder Adiel Arevalo, book designer Edwina Koch-Arroyo, printmaker-ceramic artist Nelfa Querubin and sculptor-painter Virginia Ty-Navarro.
The show was a milestone of sorts for the gallery, as all-women exhibitions were generally unheard of in Manila during this period, Liongoren says in retrospect. There was only a sprinkling of active women artists in a predominantly-male art scene, in spite of the fact that women were instrumental to setting up institutions recognized as pivotal to the emergence and development of Philippine modern and contemporary art: Lyd Arguilla of the Philippine Art Gallery, Purita Kalaw Ledesma of the Art Association of the Philippines, and even former First Lady Imelda Marcos who "[endowed] 'culture and the arts' with both capital and infrastructure"4.
Before, male artists were used to having women as organizers [of art events], but seemed not as open once the latter's qualities as artists were emphasized, Liongoren opines. Such shows, she added, initially caused others to raise their brows in skepticism but eventually became more accepted in time. The idea and practice of an all-women show persisted.
The Liongoren Gallery's Walong Filipina exhibition officially began in 1990, the same year when KASIBULAN was organized by Imelda Cajipe-Endaya and others. For this debut show, Liongoren gathered eight women artists: Ida Bugayong, Cajipe-Endaya, Brenda Fajardo, Lydia Ingle, Veronica Lim-Yuyitung, Lluch, Nelfa Querubin and Arlene Villaver. The gallery, not surprisingly, was also a venue for some of KASIBULAN's meetings later on, Liongoren recalls.
The title Walong Filipina was arrived at out of sheer coincidence and symbolic significance.
"Why eight (8)? While I was listing down all the artists I wanted to feature, I stopped at the number 8. Later on, I rationalized [the choice] by noting that the number 8 has a closed form, forming an infinite loop. I wanted to emphasize that women were infinitely endowed with talent," Liongoren says.
This time, the public proved to be more receptive to the concept. "I tried to hold a Walong Filipina show every year after that. I'd feature a senior artist and a young woman artist, or bunso (literally translated from Tagalog as youngest child) who is new in the art scene," she says. Villaver was the 1990 show's bunso.
Liongoren realized the potentials and the power of the show, and decided to pursue it as an annual art event. "Artists are encouraged by the mere fact that you highlight their characters as women. They try to put their best foot forward," she says.
Celebrating Diversities and Affinities
Walong Filipina has held 15 shows to date since that first exhibit back in 1990. The gallery has generally sustained the annual all-women's show, except for a brief respite from 1996 to 1997 when the series was suspended for operational reasons5 and 2002, when Liongoren was preoccupied with organizing a separate art exhibit commemorating the EDSA 1 popular revolt6.
Since its debut in 1990, Walong Filipina has taken on an organic and dynamic character of its own, a state of flux and exploration. From its first show at the Liongoren Gallery along New York St. in Cubao, Walong Filipina has sojourned through various other locations throughout the Philippines as a travelling exhibition: ranging from commercial to academic spaces, from government to Catholic Church offices, galleries and museums7. Liongoren Gallery also operated a second branch at the commercial shopping center Megamall from October 1992 to 1996, adding to the list of venues. At times, the exhibit would be staged as simultaneous shows, or held in tandem with workshops or discussions.
Equally varied were the artistic media encompassed by the shows. Saying that she does not want art to "be pegged to the usual paintings", Liongoren has consciously attempted to display the diversity of media, modes and materials that Filipina artists have worked with. At the start, the exhibitions featured mostly traditional paintings and sculptures, but quickly widened its range to include non-traditional media such as installation and performance art, fiber art, clay art, advertising and graphic design, craft, cuisine, fashion, dance, music, theater, film, poetry, literature8, and even ceramics, miniatures and floral arrangements.
Rather than feature a single artists' group or a pre-defined barkada (clique, coterie or group of friends, when loosely translated from Tagalog), Walong Filipina generally assembles a loose set of individual women artists converging through incidental or defined thematic affinities, which are defined in the subtitles given to each Walong Filipina show.
The women in Walong Filipina are conceptually-unified through commonly-shared territories, identities and roles, or advocacies.
At least two Walong Filipina shows have grouped artists on the basis of shared geographies: Mga Anak ni Urduja (Urduja's Children, 1999), a travelling exhibit featuring women artists who trace their roots to Pangasinan province9, and Parangal Kay Tandang Sora (Tribute to Tandang Sora, 2003), featuring works by Filipina artists who have lived, grown up, settled, or are based in Quezon City10. Although the concept may have first originated from a curatorial assertion of regional affiliation (Liongoren hails from Dagupan, Pangasinan and is commercially based in Quezon City), the shows have been reframed as a tribute to the two heroines of Philippine pre-colonial mythology and historical armed resistance to Spanish colonization, respectively.
However, shared geographies among women artists may not always be literal. In Parangal Kay Tandang Sora, the common location (Quezon City) is merely a transit point for women artists of vastly-differentiated interests and leanings. These may also pertain to shared arenas of interest or inclinations, such as the time when Liongoren chose to feature visual and written works by writer-artists, during the first Walong Filipina show held at Megamall (a major shopping center along EDSA) in 199311.
Conversely, other Walong Filipina shows chose to celebrate professional diversity: the 2006 selection, for instance, featured a selection of visual artists who were practitioners from various fields: dance, music, advertising, photography and film12. (For details of this exhibition, please see Lisa Ito's essay, Ctrl+P issue 1: www.trauma-interrupted.org/ctrlp/issue1.pdf )
Curatorial selection of participating artists is mostly done by Liongoren, in consultation with other women artists. As the shows went on, Liongoren occasionally "recycled" several artists, although always in the context of a new exhibiting group. Another unintentional aspect of the Walong Filipina series was its featuring of mother and daughter artists, albeit in separate shows: Julie Lluch and Krista, Aba and Sari Lluch-Dalena, Cristina and Maria Taniguchi, for instance.
Thematics and transits
Many of Walong Filipina's offerings and themes have been premised on shared advocacies and conceptual interrogations: patriotism and nationalism in contemporary practice, ecological and environmental struggles, questions of authorship and gender, and the delineation of personal and collective identities, for instance.
The ecological thematic was first explored in the sixth Walong Filipina show in 1995, which featured applications of clay and fiber art by women artists, who created works from volcanic ash, pina cloth, twigs, earthenware, tinalak and tie-dyed textiles and other indigenous materials. A few years earlier in 1991, Mt. Pinatubo in Central Luzon erupted, leaving in its wake a massive amount of debris that people from various professions have sought to utilize as an alternative material, Walong Filipina's artists included.
The use of native materials and concern for the environment has been a recurrent theme of many Walong Filipina shows afterwards, particularly in the 2000, and 2001 exhibitions. This may be partially attributed to society's responses to increasing environmental issues and to the strategic timing of the exhibitions: March 8 (International Women's Day) and Women's Month comes right before April 22, when Earth Day is observed worldwide and in the Philippines by environmental groups.
A more direct articulation of environmental awareness and advocacy was evident in the 2000 and 2001 shows, entitled Sa Ngalan ng Kalikasan I at II (In the Name of Nature I and II), respectively. The first exhibit revolved around the philosophical theme of nature as a site of rebirth, regeneration and destruction. The second show, composed mostly of KASIBULAN members, revolved around the theme of nature and nurturing. Incidentally, many natural disasters and tragedies occurred during this period when Walong Filipina chose to take on the environment as a priority cause: the Payatas landfill landslide tragedy in 1999, landslides and flash floods due to strong rains, and the furor over the Visiting Forces Agreement and toxic wastes left in US naval bases in Subic and Clark.
Another thematic arena explored by Walong Filipina was the process of imagining self and nation. The 2004 travelling exhibit with the subtitle Ang Paglalahad ng Walong Filipina (Revelations by Eight Filipinas), showcased two works from each of the eight featured artists13, representing who they were and what they wanted to be. The show, writes art critic Alice Guillermo, "[hints] at revelatory self-referential narratives" and "a reckoning with what constitutes one's deepest self or how one defines oneself as a woman and as a human being"14.
But the artists of Walong Filipina were not always women, exclusively. In 1998, the year of the Centennial of the 1898 Philippine Revolution, the gallery commissioned eight male artists to pay tribute to eight Filipina revolutionaries15 during the period of dissent against Spanish colonial rule. The eight participating Filipino artists were allowed to choose and portray from the book Women in the Philippine Revolution (edited by Rafaelita Hilario Soriano) eight Katipuneras (women members of the Katipunan, the lead revolutionary organization founded and led by Andres Bonifacio) who would represent the first eight provinces that revolted against the Spanish rule over the Philippine islands.
Liongoren Gallery also celebrated the Centennial of the Philippine Feminist Movement in 2005 through a back-to-back solo exhibition of Imelda Cajipe-Endaya's works entitled Conversations on Juan Luna and the Walong Filipina exhibit. Norma Liongoren infused a collaborative element to the two exhibitions by framing the Walong Filipina show as a response to or "conversation" with Cajipe-Endaya's collages, which were composed of old silk-screened images of Juan Luna's Spolarium representing each of the eight featured artists16 in turn. This process of reaction, appropriation and dialogue unifies the lives and works of the nine women artists, threading them together and subverting traditional notions of authorship.
For this year, the Walong Filipina 2007 show straddles traditional dividing distinctions between classes and crafts, by including in one exhibition the works of women artists and artisans alike. Subtitled Daragang Magayon ('Beautiful Maiden', in the Bicol17 dialect), the exhibit features works from Bicol-based women artists: three "fine arts" artists—Lina Llaguno Ciani, Tosha Albor and Raquel Almonte and four craftswomen: handloom weavers Socorro Napa and Benita Tucay and craftswomen and typhoon Reming18 (International codename: Xangsane) survivors Mercoria Basas, Eustaquia Barce and Marissa Mendoza.
Also interesting is Liongoren's appropriation of the term bunso, to signify the "new" or "youngest" artist of each batch. Bunso as a local term of endearment does not exclusively refer to familial or blood relations but connotes informal cultural and social formations as well. The term's usage implies the creation of a community: not a competitive and strictly hierarchical one, but a cooperative and communal gathering of sisters.
Lastly, most of the shows function as tributes to historical figures or individual women artists, such as the 2005 show, which paid homage to Paz Paterno, the first Filipina painter to be given historical recognition and to the late contemporary artist Pacita Abad, known for her tapestries. The 1993 show was dedicated to the late Dolores Feria, who was Liongoren's professor in Western Thought (as the subject was then called) at the University of the Philippines. Liongoren later on found out that Feria painted in addition to writing and teaching. In at least one case, Walong Filipina is dedicated to women as a whole sector: Sa Ngalan ng Kalikasan II, was a tribute to all women who collectively engaged in the EDSA 2 popular uprising, which overthrew the administration of Joseph Estrada, now on trial for alleged anomalies, including unexplained wealth resulting from illegal gambling (jueteng).kickbacks. This year's Walong Filipina is a tribute to the survivors of Typhoon Reming, where part of the show's proceeds of show will go to a fund for art-based rehabilitation work led by the House of Comfort Art Network, Inc. (ARTHOC).
This practice of parangal or paying tribute also sets the Walong Filipina exhibits apart from other shows, as it indicates a continuity of purpose: the word connotes both gratitude and a bestowment of honor towards the subject, and, more importantly, allegiance to a shared cause.
A 'Midwife of Ideas'
The story of Walong Filipina, moreover, is a testimony to Norma Liongoren's unique though low-profile sojourn as a self-taught curator. In the Philippines, the role of curator remains a largely loose one which is often shared by artists, critics, writers, teachers, and even gallery owners out of contingency.
Liongoren's story of how she came to be is best appreciated in the context of the informal character of curatorship in the Philippine setting and in relation to her other gendered roles. As curator of the Walong Filipina show, Liongoren engages in a multitude of tasks: conceptualizing, mobilizing and motivating, contacting the artists, meeting deadlines, scouting for venues, negotiating, socializing, inviting, entertaining guests, communicating, educating, networking, promoting, delegating tasks, cooking, overseeing administrative work, supervising the set-up, even finding appropriate clothes and standing in for absent artists during photo shoots. In between these, she attends to her other duties as gallery proprietor, art dealer, wife, and mother.
"I'm an organizer, people-oriented by nature. Along the way, there are people who gravitate towards you," she says, "I get involved in their lives. I try to get them all together in a meeting, try to mobilize them, get them to contribute. They get excited." This degree of influence enables her to engage in a dialogue with others, to be a "midwife of ideas" as Liongoren terms it.
Thirty years ago, being a "midwife of ideas" was the farthest thing that Liongoren, a trained-but-no-longer practicing nurse and field worker immersed in population research, had in mind. Events, however, steered her towards the visual arts, leading her to engage in it full-time. Liongoren founded the gallery in March 1981 after marrying the renowned abstractionist Alfredo Liongoren. Her foray into art dealership, she says, was an unexpected consequence of being a painter's wife, as she would often deliver her husband's works to clients and would be asked by his fellow painters if she could bring their works along. Although Liongoren nursed a fervent interest in the arts "as a spectator", it was her family and professional background (business, medical services, and work with non-government organizations) which unwittingly prepared her for the tasks of selling works of art.
Liongoren eventually took on the role of curating most of the gallery's exhibitions, conceptualizing her own shows in the process, the longest-running of which are the Walong Filipina exhibitions.
"[The shows] go with my current involvements. It's me. It emanates from my advocacies and concerns,"19 she says. This is perhaps the reason why Walong Filipina's themes are reflective of personal passions and advocacies which Liongoren has carefully cultivated through the years: feminism and gender studies, patriotism, social justice, and environmental struggles.
She, however, remains self-effacing when it comes to her role and process as a curator. "I'm not a trained curator, I just learn along the way," she says, describing her process as oido (Spanish for "by the ear", e.g. having an ear for music, or moving as one goes along) and going by instinct.
But what accurate instinct it is. Whether Liongoren eventually acknowledges it or not, Walong Filipina has, for the past seventeen years under her care, proved to be a formidable contributor to the pursuit of the feminist discourse in Philippine contemporary art. For birthing more than a hundred women artists in the last twenty years, Liongoren has proved herself as one of the more capable midwives on this side of the artistic archipelago. ###--
