i went to two museums this week, The American Folk Art Museum and the Museum of the American Indian, primarily due to the resonance I feel towards craft and art made by non-academically trained people. I owe this empathy I guess to the fact that I am working from my pre-academic knowledge of wood carving and wood work, both of which were very much part of my family's history, as my grandfather used to be a furniture-maker in Ilocos. It was one of my mother's cousins who taught me the basics of rebulto carving and I did the rest of my learning by observation, and later, aided by the conceptual framework of connoisseurship, I was able to classify designs and styles of wood objects made in my mothers hometown of San Vicente. (Ilocos seems to be the point of origin of all my creative impulses, and I keep coming back to this land where I was born for more ideas, as it seems).
The works that I went out to see in these two museums would profoundly change the way I see folk and native art. What is also important to note here is that there has never been any extensive cultural exchange between folk American and Native American with Filipinos, except for (mis)representations in pop culture and cinema of the cowboy vs indian variety of the 70's. The same goes with the African and perhaps Eastern European cultures. So coming to New York I wanted to encounter these through museum objects and even contemporary artworks. Where I expected to find strangeness, I actually found some form of connection: some type of resonance that is triggered by the schema of figurative representation and even symbolism in textiles and basketry.
It would seem that these connections, although framed by an anthropological understanding (comparisons etc), would be sufficient answers for me to work on. If I were working in the 1990's, perhaps. But this time it is different: contemporary art is shaped differently and I found my world rocked by expressions of concept-based art and relational aesthetics - which abound here by the way. And they concretely are presented to me by my own former teacher, Alfredo Aquilizan, who is also in New York now prior to a three month residency in California. Yesterday over lunch at Capizzi in Hell's Kitchen, we went over his approach to art making and how this has evolved from object-based to process-based projects. His work deals with relationships of people, with people and the idea of using art as a provocation, a common project whose products are NOT the work, but the totality of the process of conversing, exchange and interaction on very concrete terms. This open approach should have attracted me, made me excited, as these creative modalities affirm my values of authentic exchange and positive response to the world...and yet something makes me turn away and desire the solitude of the studio and the soothing comfort of working with wood.
Indeed relational aesthetics can be considered the new environment where contemporary practice of folk art, outsider art and indigenous art can find their own footing in the transactions and discourses of art today. The paradigm of the solitary artist, engaged in his craft, can look so "old" now. But is the need for being contemporary the same as the need for relevance? Cannot the artist himself create the frames of reference for his work and not rely on the machinations of curators, exhibition programmers and museum directors? Or is this merely a hope? Or does anyone give a damn about this anymore?
Let me summarize my dilemma:
My premise in my work with rebultos is that I am attempting to infuse new relevance to the folk art form by framing it in the environments of contemporary spaces and art paradigms. Yet suddenly I am cofronted by a challenge to return the form that I have been trying to extend and enrich with my own personal meanings to the same community from where I learned the craft. I do not think I am ready for such an engagement...perhaps one day, when I am older and more confident of what the hell I am doing.
Because what I am quite unnerved here in New York is the doubt that haunted me since I started this journey into wood. Am I outdated? Am I still relevant...or is my work means something? Or damn all these doubts and go on with what I am really interested in, because no one, not even the most persuasive theory can tell me what I should be doing?
Also, is my defiance my own? Or is this something I have to unlearn as well?
What makes me work even more suddenly irrelevant? The mere fact that my material- wood- is not readily available in this metropolis. New York is fast becoming a battleground for me. A battleground of my mind.
-----
So did I learn something from the Museums? Yes, and it has something to do with the idea of being an outsider. I will elaborate on that in a separate non-whining essay.
The works that I went out to see in these two museums would profoundly change the way I see folk and native art. What is also important to note here is that there has never been any extensive cultural exchange between folk American and Native American with Filipinos, except for (mis)representations in pop culture and cinema of the cowboy vs indian variety of the 70's. The same goes with the African and perhaps Eastern European cultures. So coming to New York I wanted to encounter these through museum objects and even contemporary artworks. Where I expected to find strangeness, I actually found some form of connection: some type of resonance that is triggered by the schema of figurative representation and even symbolism in textiles and basketry.
It would seem that these connections, although framed by an anthropological understanding (comparisons etc), would be sufficient answers for me to work on. If I were working in the 1990's, perhaps. But this time it is different: contemporary art is shaped differently and I found my world rocked by expressions of concept-based art and relational aesthetics - which abound here by the way. And they concretely are presented to me by my own former teacher, Alfredo Aquilizan, who is also in New York now prior to a three month residency in California. Yesterday over lunch at Capizzi in Hell's Kitchen, we went over his approach to art making and how this has evolved from object-based to process-based projects. His work deals with relationships of people, with people and the idea of using art as a provocation, a common project whose products are NOT the work, but the totality of the process of conversing, exchange and interaction on very concrete terms. This open approach should have attracted me, made me excited, as these creative modalities affirm my values of authentic exchange and positive response to the world...and yet something makes me turn away and desire the solitude of the studio and the soothing comfort of working with wood.
Indeed relational aesthetics can be considered the new environment where contemporary practice of folk art, outsider art and indigenous art can find their own footing in the transactions and discourses of art today. The paradigm of the solitary artist, engaged in his craft, can look so "old" now. But is the need for being contemporary the same as the need for relevance? Cannot the artist himself create the frames of reference for his work and not rely on the machinations of curators, exhibition programmers and museum directors? Or is this merely a hope? Or does anyone give a damn about this anymore?
Let me summarize my dilemma:
My premise in my work with rebultos is that I am attempting to infuse new relevance to the folk art form by framing it in the environments of contemporary spaces and art paradigms. Yet suddenly I am cofronted by a challenge to return the form that I have been trying to extend and enrich with my own personal meanings to the same community from where I learned the craft. I do not think I am ready for such an engagement...perhaps one day, when I am older and more confident of what the hell I am doing.
Because what I am quite unnerved here in New York is the doubt that haunted me since I started this journey into wood. Am I outdated? Am I still relevant...or is my work means something? Or damn all these doubts and go on with what I am really interested in, because no one, not even the most persuasive theory can tell me what I should be doing?
Also, is my defiance my own? Or is this something I have to unlearn as well?
What makes me work even more suddenly irrelevant? The mere fact that my material- wood- is not readily available in this metropolis. New York is fast becoming a battleground for me. A battleground of my mind.
-----
So did I learn something from the Museums? Yes, and it has something to do with the idea of being an outsider. I will elaborate on that in a separate non-whining essay.
The Museum of the American Indian. Ironically framed by a Western facade.
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