Makatulog Ka Pa Kaya? at the Crucible Gallery

New Works by Pinggot Zulueta in collaboration with Virgilio S.Almario, National Artist for Literature at the Crucible Gallery, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City. November 5-17, 2013

About the Exhibition

VISION AND VERSE

By Patrick D. Flores

Poet and photographer come together to reflect on images. These are scenes of everyday life in the dense city taken by Jose Zulueta, speaking of conditions that are testimonies as much to sordidness as to survival. They are portraits of how people have been refused and how they have prevailed. This situation is a demolition of houses and thus evokes homelessness and eviction, the struggle to live with dignity and the authority of the state to carry out a policy on housing and urban development. 

  

The photographer keenly registers their presence and discerns a part of their sentiment. This is the first moment of the gesture: the rendering of the stark urban world in black and white. As if the latter were so benighted and so explicit, he chooses to mediate the imagination. The second moment of the impulse is to offer an overlay of artistic disposition: graphic details of geometric motifs in acrylic paint that invariably frame, disrupt, adorn, embroider the photography. (What is the urge of this intervention, we might ask. Is this a sign of optimism? Or just index of experiment?) The photographic image, however, has undergone levels of mediation itself: it is printed through ink jet and then painstakingly transferred on canvas with the aid of emulsion. The tedious toil that goes with it is the photographer’s commitment to an artistic process.

Finally, the third moment comes with words. The poet Virgilio S. Almario, the National Artist who is also known as Rio Alma, writes around the edges of the photographs telling verses from his copious corpus; these converse with the images that try to elicit sympathy and engagement. They look like marginalia but are actually central to sensing the ties between the languages of light and thought, reality and realization, the handwriting of a poet and the vision of the photographer, both grasping with patience the woes of the world.

Photography and Poetry 

By Jasmine T. Cruz

BusinessWorld / November 12, 2013

AN EMACIATED child with pleading eyes looks at the camera. The child’s gloomy world is captured through a black and white photo that was transferred on canvas. As though hoping to inject color into this somber world, the artist used acrylic paint to superimpose colorful geometric lines and shapes on the image. Then on the edges of the canvas are written words that say, “Ang pangarap ng ulan, maglaro sa putikan, bago kunin ng araw (The dream of the rain is to play in the mud before it is taken by the sun).”

Photojournalist Pinggot Zulueta’s work features poetry by National Artist Virgilio Almario.

This is a piece by photojournalist Pinggot Zulueta done in collaboration with National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario for the exhibit Makatulog Ka Pa Kaya? at the Crucible Gallery. Curated by Renato Habulan, the exhibit employs photos from a demolition in Taguig, Metro Manila.

In a phone interview with BusinessWorld on Nov. 12, Mr. Zulueta recalled what it was like when he took the photos in 2008. It happened just two days after he arrived from living in Australia, and he was shocked by the poverty that he witnessed. “Galing ka sa magandang bansa tapos ’yun ’yung unang bumulaga sa akin (I came from a beautiful country then that’s the first thing that I saw),” he said.

From these photos, he submitted one entitled Taguig demolition Philippines to the Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies photo competition in Rotterdam, Netherlands and won a special award. This photo is now included in the exhibit as a reworked piece entitled Diyos Na Ang Bahala.

On the choice to include Mr. Almario’s poetry in his work, Mr. Zulueta said, “Ayoko kasi na tignan yung mga litrato ng isang saglit lang (I don’t want people to look at the photographs in just one moment),” explaining that he wants the viewer to spend time looking at the photo and to think about it.

Mr. Zulueta had previously worked with Mr. Almario -- the National Artist was his editor back when he was making editorial cartoons in the 1980s and ’90s. “Sanay na siya sa mga tema ko kaya madali niyang natutulaan (He was already used to the themes that I do so it was easy to make the poetry),” he said.

The geometric lines and shapes on the photos are an expression of Mr. Zulueta’s sympathy for his subjects’ plight. “Pilit kong binubura ang kanilang kahirapan at pinapalitan ng isang imaginary at makulay na buhay (I am trying to erase their poverty and replace it with an imaginary colorful world),” he said.

The exhibit will run until Nov. 17. with cocktail reception on Nov. 13 at 6p.m. The Crucible Gallery is located at the 4th Level, SM Megamall, EDSA corner Julia Vargas Ave., Mandaluyong City.