Anting-Anting maker dies

[Fatima Lasay]

Date: Tue Dec 3, 2002 5:52 pm
Subject: good-bye Santiago Bose, filipino artist

"edd, santi bose just crossed over. heart attack. jon in makati." will keep 
you posted thru him .
---

Website http://www.santiagobose.com/

About Santiago Bose:

 From http://www.santiagobose.com/about.html
Santiago Bose, Anting-Anting (Amulet) Maker
Invisible Culture 1997 http://www.santiagobose.com/newworks.html

---
In the 1970s, contemporary art in the Philippine flourished under the twin 
(and disastrously entwined) stimuli of modern development and the special 
cultural requirements of Ferdinand Marcos' dictatorial regime. In those 
phantasmic halcyon years of 'the New Society' when the Philippines was the 
most developed economy in the region, Santiago Bose was one of a brilliant 
generation benefiting from extravagant public patronage and booming private 
collecting. Early exhibitions established him as a witty iconoclast whose 
collages and paintings investigated the florid pungency of modern 
Philippines' 'culture'. Santiago Bose was exceptionally sensitive not only 
to the visual richness of his country but also to the clashing social 
discrepancies this complexity often betrayed.

Precocious success was followed by self-imposed exile in the early 1980s 
when the repressions of the Marcos period drove many artists and 
intellectuals from the Philippines. But there was another motive in 
Santiago Bose's flight from Manila. He followed the well-worn trail of 
ambitious artists from 'peripheral' cultures to the art world center in New 
York; a quest exaggerated by the melancholy dependence on American culture 
that is the most destructive legacy of US colonialism to the Philippines. 
This pilgrimage was exceptional but also typical story, because it 
introduced Bose not to celebrity as an 'international' artist, but to the 
wealth of resistance to it from the dominant culture that the West 
shelters. In the US, he discovered art made by 'minority' cultural groups 
increasingly aware of their creative strength.

When he returned to the Philippines in 1986, Santiago Bose settled in his 
boyhood home in the mountain city of Baguio. He became committed to working 
as an artist in the region, and in 1987 was one of the founders of the 
Baguio Arts Guild, an energetic focus for cultural activity in the northern 
Cordillera region. The Guild has contributed significantly to Philippine 
culture by emphasizing regional tribal traditions and the importance of 
using indigeous materials. In the 1990s, not only regional but global 
cultural interaction is becoming increasingly complex. Santiago Bose's 
practice now addresses the inter-relationships of personal, social and 
political realms of life in the postmodern era and the ways these register 
on (and are shaped by) the subjectivity of the individual.

Julie Ewington
Curator, Queensland Art Gallery, Australia
Reprinted from the catalogue of Adelaide Installations, Adelaide Festival 1994
 From http://www.santiagobose.com/artist.html

---
 From http://www.maarte.org/articles/article.php?article=artistBose.html
SANTIAGO BOSE: How the Filipino Becomes a Nomad
By Eileen Tabios

"I write on Art because, contrary to some people's assumption that it is a 
purely aesthetic activity, it is a way to engage with capitalism, with 
politics, with poetry, with history, with one's environment," I tell 
Santiago Bose. We are shooting the breeze because it's the only thing we 
can shoot in San Francisco as we meet to share coffee. We are in the mood 
to shoot something given the events unfolding in our shared birthland, the 
Philippines.

-- the author in conversation with Santiago Bose,
November 6, 2000

Corruption is not a new theme in art history, and undoubtedly will continue 
providing a fertile source for artists to mine. As a theme, corruption has 
been present in the works of Philippine artist Santiago Bose for the last 
three decades and perseveres in his current works, including three 2000 
paintings: Mondrian Snared, Spiderman and Boats. Nor is it a theme Bose can 
leave given its ongoing reality in the Philippines.

Filipinos around the world have hoped that after Ferdinand Marcos' 
dictatorship during the 1970s and 1980s ended the Philippines would be more 
immune to political corruption. Unfortunately, Hades seems to have an 
infinite number of layers for that beleaguered country. For several weeks 
before and after our conversation, tens of thousands of people clamored on 
the streets in the Philippines for President Joseph "Erap" Estrada's 
impeachment - a similar unfolding of "People Power" had helped oust Marcos 
from power. Estrada's government is reeling from the scandal that erupted 
after a provincial governor charged him with taking more than $11 million 
in bribes over the years from illegal gambling operations. On November 13, 
2000, the House of Representatives impeached Erap, sending the charges to 
the Senate for trial. It is the first impeachment ever of a Philippine 
president.

Ironically, Estrada's accuser, Ilocos Sur Governor Luis Singson, betrayed 
Estrada because the President decided to award some gambling operations to 
one of Singson's rivals - thus, do we know the answer to the question of 
whether honor exists among thieves.

In the Philippines, the controversy surprised many, but not for its 
existence so much as its revelations of how deeply corruption infiltrates. 
As one writer from Baguio City (Bose's base in the Philippines) e-mailed to 
an Internet listserve, "Although I wasn't surprised at Singson's 
revelations, his graphic descriptions of drinking+mahjong sessions with the 
President's top officials and cronies on board the President's yacht, where 
one could win or lose tens of millions of pesos in one night, and how some 
senators could receive one million pesos each just for 'balato' [tip] 
without as much as asking where the money came from, stirs up in me an 
unspeakable, almost nauseous urge to do a Rambo on the entire coterie and 
throw up on their bodies afterwards. And I'm considered a most respectful, 
law-abiding fellow hereabouts."

Corruption is so rampant that several of Marcos' own cronies which 
controlled political and economic power during Martial Law are back in such 
positions, and they are even wealthier now. Their return highlights how the 
problem is not just the morals, or lack thereof, of any particular 
politician but the embedded amorality which governs much of politics and 
business. As the Estrada gambling scandal unfolded, poet Mila Aguilar was 
moved to disseminate a public statement which she titled "The Ideology of 
Plunder and Our Tasks." After being imprisoned in 1984 by the Marcos 
regime, she was among the first group of 39 political prisoners ordered 
released by Marcos' successor Corazon Aquino in 1986. In her essay, Aguilar 
summarizes the Philippines' problems as a "culture of corruption" that has 
existed as far back as four centuries ago when Spain colonized the 
Philippines. It began with Spain's successful bribery of tribal leaders to 
help them consolidate their power, a strategy also used three centuries 
later by colonizing Americans who needed to maintain their power over a 
rebellious population. Today, Aguilar notes, corruption is no longer 
confined to the top echelons of political power as its culture has come to 
be accepted and then practiced by its victims, the "masses." Aguilar explains:

"The culture of corruption, small-time, on a petty scale, that had festered 
for centuries in the minds of top officials of the land [has become] a 
full-blown Ideology of Plunder...Erap has extended this ideology... His 
only pretension is that Erap wants to be a Mafioso Godfather to the poor, 
foremost among which are his families, his cronies, and whoever of the 
masses would care to go and beg for alms. The problem is, there are plenty 
of masses willing to go and beg for alms. These plenty could already glean, 
from a deeply ingrained sense of history, that they have no way of rising 
above the heap unless they too rape, and plunder, and kill. If they could 
have someone else do it for them, and receive whatever little benefits they 
could from the act, they would be thankful enough...

You can almost feel this way of thinking in the air - in the gasoline 
station, at the market, while riding a taxi, at city hall especially. The 
rank dishonesty practically stares you in the face... At the gasoline 
station, gasoline boy and truck driver collude to divide a hundred pesos 
"earned" from putting in 400 pesos into the truck tank, and then placing 
500 pesos on the driver's receipt. At the market, vendor and inspector 
collude to lessen a hundred to a hundred fifty grams from the kilo... 
Finally, riding a taxi home, you ask the driver, "E bakit pa tatakbo si 
So-and-So Star?" [Why is this movie star running for office]?" and he 
answers, " Siempre, gustong yumaman [Of course, he/she wants to get rich]." 
Of course!

This is the kind of culture, the kind of ideology, which we will have to 
contend with...throughout the term of the Estrada administration, if it 
manages to fool the people some more; and after, no matter who else takes 
over. For the Ideology of Plunder is rife in the land, and it can be 
totally erased only in the event that the masses begin to feel that the 
future, at last, is already in their hands."

Coincidentally bolstering Aguilar's concerns, the New York Times' recent 
coverage of the opposition rallies in Manila includes an analysis that if 
Estrada is driven out of power, it might not be due to "People Power" so 
much as "Peso Power" - specifically the lack of peso power; the Philippine 
currency has fallen nearly 10% against the dollar since the Estrada scandal 
erupted. A long-term deterioration in the country's currency can be 
destructive to a country like the Philippines which is heavily dependent on 
imported fuel. As the peso drops, the country's costs mount and its economy 
could grind to a halt. However, there are certain implications to this 
analysis: that is, Estrada's successor might address the currency problem 
but without, yet again, affecting the root causes of corruption.

Cultural and political activists are publicizing the importance of 
addressing larger concerns beyond merely ousting Estrada. As the activists 
point out, even if Estrada is impeached, his logical successor Vice 
President Gloria Macapaga - another member of the ruling elite of families 
- would not necessarily address systemic corruption; in fact, Macapagal has 
not aligned herself with opposition groups calling, not just for Estrada's 
ouster but, support for policies to address various sectors which have 
suffered the brunt of Estrada's "anti-people" policies (the opposition's 
agenda includes land reform, better housing for the poor, and improved 
social services).

What some have labeled "Erap's eruptions" provided the backdrop to my 
recent conversations with Bose who came of age during Marcos' reign. His 
college years in the late 1960s was characterized by an atmosphere of 
political protest and he was a founding member of a radical arts 
organization. He dropped out of school the year before Marcos declared 
Martial Law in 1972.

"There were people who died for a cause (during Marcos' rule)," Bose said, 
his brow furrowed. "When the opportunists returned to power, it means their 
sacrifices weren't worth it!"
Our conversation, which took place before he was due to embark for Hong 
Kong to exhibit his new works, was wide-ranging but frequently returned to 
the topic of Estrada's betrayal of his political and moral fiduciary 
duties. At one point, I attempted but failed to lighten our mood by joking, 
"Sometimes, don't you just want to paint something that has absolutely 
nothing to do with politics?"

He smiled ruefully, rose from his chair and motioned me to follow him to 
another room. There, he rolled out some canvases that he painted during his 
October 2000 stint as artist-in-residence at Pacific Bridge Gallery in 
Oakland, California. Mondrian Snared displays his riff on Mondrian: tiny 
squares colored red, white and blue lie snared within three woven baskets. 
The baskets hang vertically in the middle of the canvas. Peering over them 
stands the moody figure of a man whose facial features have been erased 
into an all-black face. The squares themselves are fractured and trapped. 
In other words, how can Bose address only formal art tenets when the 
Philippines continues to heave through problems which could be argued as 
rooted within its history over the last four centuries?

That the Philippines is unable to implement the framework to support the 
majority of its citizens is particularly unfortunate - its population has 
ballooned to surpass 80 million. Spiderman addresses the issue of the 
growing number of the disenfranchised - the painting features a man clad in 
a Spiderman costume waiting amidst a crowd for a bus. The Spiderman on the 
busline, unlike his image at the bottom of the canvas, which shows him in 
his comic book form of fit muscularity and energy, stands resignedly with 
the beginning of a paunch bulging his belly. It is a depressing image, 
especially for a Filipino viewer like myself who grew up in Baguio City 
where comics were popular enough to spawn store-front businesses 
specializing in renting comics at a few centavos per reading. (Comic books 
were too expensive for the majority to buy.) In the Philippines, Spiderman, 
like many comic book heroes, not only receive the populace's admiration but 
their love.

But in the Philippines, heroes have a difficult time: Spiderman is 
relegated to waiting forlornly for a bus which a viewer can easily sense is 
long past due. Heroism is difficult when, as Aguilar says, Filipinos can 
"glean, from a deeply ingrained sense of history, that they have no way of 
rising above the heap unless they too rape, and plunder, and kill." But it 
also works the other way and, as Aguilar points out, needs to work the 
other way: the masses must become heroic. Filipinos cannot rely on anyone 
but themselves to resolve their crises. Self-determination is all the more 
important given how William H. Taft thought that Filipinos (whom Taft 
called "little brown brothers") needed to be saved - such thinking had 
provided a transparent rationale to the U.S. invasion in 1898 which turned 
the Philippines into an American colony, an act with whose legacy Filipinos 
continue even now to grapple.

In Bose's recent paintings, the color gray plays a significant role. Much 
of the street scene in Spiderman is colored gray. In Mondrian Snared, the 
baskets are painted gray, along with other sections of the painting's 
background. Bose's concern is obviously not formal - he does not choose 
gray for serving to emphasize the brightness of the red, white and blue 
colors of Mondrian's reference and Spiderman's costume. He chooses gray 
because the color signifies a mood as befits the political, social and 
cultural situations in the Philippines. It is an atmosphere of sadness and 
resignation, but not yet the all-encompassing despair that black would 
symbolize. Individual heroes may feel despair (the black-faced man in 
Mondrian Snared), but despair is not yet the overwhelming national mood: 
Estrada still might leave office. The people are protesting and scores of 
prominent lawmakers are fleeing the President's political party.

Such faith also may be found in the image of Spiderman. Bose paints his 
paunch as in its early stages - that is, it's not too late for Spiderman to 
regain his fitness and perform heroic acts again. Bose says, "I believe 
Erap will be out of the Presidency by the end of the year."
Yet an impeachment of Estrada does not necessarily signify that it is time 
for gray to evolve to bright white. If embedded corruption is the problem, 
it might not be addressed by a new president, even someone able to improve 
the currency rate. Things can remain gray for a long time in the 
Philippines, whether or not Estrada leaves.

Mondrian Snared and Spiderman also use colors - red, white and blue - which 
can be associated with the United States as the Philippines' second 
colonial master. Though the Philippines had defeated Spain to earn their 
independence in 1898, the U.S. had taken over the Philippines by claiming 
it acquired them (along with Cuba and Puerto Rico) from Spain under the 
terms of the Treaty of Paris. The effects of U.S. colonialism over the 
Philippines continue to reverberate. Filipino American scholar Leny M. 
Strobel explains, "Filipinos must always implicate the past and the 
continuing colonizing and imperial gaze from the West as forces that impact 
and shape the country's fate."

Strobel says she considers the gray in Bose's canvas to symbolize the 
"ambivalence of the Philippines' post- or neo-colonial situation," noting 
that Filipino despair, though "not complete, is sufficiently paralyzing 
because people's consciousness seem to be frozen in what Brazilian 
philosopher/educator Paulo Freire calls "naive consciousness" rather than 
"critical consciousness." Since the Philippines is a religious country 
whose politicians court many religious leaders and their followers as part 
of the opposition, it could seem illogical for such religious fervor to 
fail to translate into long-term political transformation. On this lack of 
progress, Freire offers insight through his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 
Freire writes:

"By preaching sin and hell, churches appeal to the fatalistic and 
frightened consciousness of the oppressed. The promise of heaven becomes a 
relief for their existential fatigue. The more the masses are drowned in a 
culture of silence, the more they take refuge in churches that offer pie in 
the sky by and by. They see the church as a womb where they can hide from 
an oppressive society. In despising the world as one of vice, sin, and 
impurity, they are in one sense taking revenge on their oppressors - 'you 
are powerful but the world over which you hold sway is evil.' This directs 
their anger against the world instead of the social system that runs the 
world. By doing so they hope to reach transcendence without passing the way 
of the mundane - the pain of domination leads them to accept this 
anesthesia with the hope that it will strengthen them to fight sin and the 
devil leaving untouched their real source of oppression."

Indeed, on November 11, the government organized a demonstration 
characterized as "a prayer rally" presumably to obviate the "People Power" 
protests taking place against Estrada. Many participants were members of 
charismatic Christian groups. In his prayer at the rally, Estrada said he 
was offering his embattled presidency to God. As Strobel observes, 
"moralizing occurs (if evidence of newspaper editorials and prayer rallies 
count) but somehow this fails to move the rich and the masses toward any 
real change that would be brought about by a politicized/historicized 
critical consciousness."

It is such "critical consciousness" that Bose brings to bear in his 
paintings. If Filipinos deserve moral leadership; they must demand it 
instead of allowing despair or cynicism to cast their votes for candidates 
like Estrada (whose prior achievements were as an actor in action movies -- 
certainly another form of opiate against life's miseries). Thus, Bose 
snares the Mondrian colors (the colors of the U.S. flag) into gray baskets 
representing the indigenous or non-colonized Filipino. To create the image 
of the baskets, Bose requested some Igorot tribesmen (residing in the 
mountains surrounding Baguio City) to weave the baskets. He then 
photographed the baskets and, from those photographs, painted the images 
onto canvases. To overthrow "colonial mentality," the painting suggests 
that gray - symbolizing Filipino - must defeat or capture red, white and 
blue. Colonial mentality refers to a state of psychological colonization 
even after the colonizers have left, and manifests itself in a variety of 
ways ranging from the privileging of Western-made products to 
discriminating against darker-skinned members of the population.

However, gray might contain yet another layer of meaning. While Bose worked 
on these paintings during his residency at Pacific Bridge, the gallery 
exhibited his works with the abstract paintings of Filipino American artist 
Carlos Villa. Much of Villa's works utilize a gray palette. For Villa, gray 
symbolizes what is between, as in the shade between black and white. Gray 
resonates for Villa to symbolize his status as a Filipino American and part 
of an immigrant family. As with others in his position, he is forever 
caught between two worlds: the U.S. and the land of his family's origin. 
Unlike with European immigrants, Filipino Americans can never escape the 
sense of being an "Other" in the U.S., even if they are born Americans as 
Villa was, due to the obvious physicality of their bodies.

Therefore, gray may resonate, too, for Bose as a shade symbolizing 
immigration and diaspora. Bose conceded that he has become a "nomad." He 
anticipated returning to the Philippines for four months a year, perhaps 
less. The rest of the year will be spent in the U.S., in Canada (where he 
finds it easier to support himself) and Australia (where his partner 
resides). Why would this cultural activist not spend the majority of his 
time in the Philippines? His answer goes beyond the effects of the troubled 
political situation of the country. The answer has to do with the artist 
needing to find spaces, both physical and cultural, which support his art.

Bose said his paintings are not popular in Manila where many art-buyers 
prefer to buy a still life of, say, flowers. Shaking his head, he asked, 
"How can an artist paint flowers when people are hungry, when the 
opportunists are back in power - when morality has so degraded?"

Some artists paint flowers, of course, in order to court buyers. One of the 
Philippines' leading poets (as well as art aficionado) Alfred "Krip" Yuson 
noted in a recent conversation, "In Manila, most art buyers would still 
prefer works that blend well with their sala color schemes, or are at least 
of the representational variety. [Bose]'s works are often considered as 
having too much content, that is, their revolutionary or nationalist or 
anti-colonial references may be fine for museum or gallery walls, but not 
in a master's bedroom." Consequently, many and possibly most of Bose's 
collectors live outside the Philippines.

Equally significant, however, to his life as a wanderer, Bose said he feels 
he must relate with the world outside the Philippines in order to enhance 
his art. "When I bring in art magazines from around the world to the 
artists in Baguio, it's because I wish them to have a bigger concept of the 
world - to look at the Philippines and their art from many angles," he 
stressed. "I believe Art empowers people, gives them a stronger vision of 
looking at their environment."

In fact, Bose noted the irony of Imelda Marcos' cultural events as causing 
reduced governmental support for art-related activities. He said, "Even 
Corazon Aquino distanced herself from culture in response to Imelda's 
cultural activities. Did you know that there was a period when the 
Philippines we refused to import in artists outside the Philippines - but 
this also made Filipino artists more internal looking. This hurt our 
culture and is a disadvantage both artistically and in a global economy."

Thus, Bose incorporates reflections on Western culture (e.g. Mondrian) in 
addition to Filipino elements in his paintings. Bose is highly-respected 
for developing a postcolonial strategy in the 1970s of incorporating 
indigenous references in his works (e.g. from the culture of tribes living 
in the Cordillera mountain ranges surrounding Baguio City); such indigenous 
references are significant for symbolizing Filipino pre-existing culture 
before the Philippines was colonized. (Reflecting a shared sensibility with 
Bose, some of his artist-peers had bypassed painting as they considered oil 
on canvas reflective of Western mediums by which they didn't wish to be 
colonized). But Bose will not disregard Western culture because he will not 
disregard the world. He incorporates non-Filipino culture (e.g. Dutch 
paintings in older works and the art of Vietnam in planned work) because, 
ultimately, he also does not wish to limit his art to the politics of his 
time - a politics that, he said, has created a "damaged culture" in the 
Philippines. "I still believe in indigenous concepts," he stressed. "But 
what is important is not to deny history but to use it in a new way, such 
as through hybridization."

Nonetheless, if Bose has become a nomad, he only has entered yet another 
gray area. A nomadic existence might exacerbate a sense of alienation as 
Filipinos outside the Philippines - including Filipinos born in their 
adoptive countries - generally have never lost a sense of uneasiness within 
non-Philippine environs. In the U.S, as observed by Filipino scholar E. San 
Juan, "Filipino American intellectuals have begun to articulate a unique 
dissident sensibility based not on nostalgia, nativism, or ethnocentrism 
but on the long durable revolutionary tradition of the Filipino masses and 
the emancipatory projects of grassroots movements in the Philippines where 
their parents and relatives came from."

About 10% of the Philippines' population are now scattered around the 
globe. Filipino Americans comprise the largest Asian American group in the 
U.S. But San Juan notes, "Filipinos cannot be called the fashionable 
'transnationals' because of racialized, ascribed markers (physical 
appearance, accent, peculiar non-white folkways) that are needed to sustain 
and reproduce Eurocentric white supremacy. Ultimately, Filipino agency in 
the era of global capitalism depends not only on the vicissitudes of social 
transformation in the U.S. but, more crucially, on the fate of the struggle 
for autonomy and popular-democratic sovereignty in the homeland."

The nature of the Filipino diaspora is addressed in Bose's painting BOATS 
that features a gray depiction of various boats by a dock. The only spots 
of color - vivid orange - are the boats themselves. The radiant orange 
might symbolize how departure or travels from the Philippines sources for 
light, for vision, and for an artist's freedom of the imagination. Yet the 
world beyond the dock, beyond the Philippines,


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