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carinajavierartap · 4 years ago

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Title: Pasan

Artist: Mark Justiniani

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Year: 2000

Provenance: Gift from Dawn Justiniani-Atienza

April 25, 1966, St. Mark’s Day, renowned artist-activist Mark Justiniani was born in Bacolod, Negros Occidental. His love of art began so early on in life - before he had even reached the age to go to school - that he had to ask his parents for a notebook to fill with scribbles and sketches. By the time he was of age to attend school and able to receive his first communion, he was awestruck by the way Adelaide "Ade" de Bethune's "Angry Christ" in St. Joseph the Worker Chapel in Victoria, Negros Occidental instilled fear to the eyes of everyone who viewed it, yet retained a beauty that left much to admire. It was then, Justiniani realized that he had just encountered art. By the age of 16 he had entered the University of the Philippines, Diliman majoring in Arts Education, later on joining protest art movements associated with socio-political issues of the time. By the 1980’s and 1990’s he had established himself as an artist-activist and had identified with the lineage of Social Realism through his experience in being a part of the artist initiatives or collectives Artista ng Bayan (1987-1990), Grupong Salingpusa (1985-1992), and Sanggawa Collective (1994-1998). Through the years he had been awarded a total of 9 times, one of them being the highly-respected triennial award Thirteen Artists Awards, Most Outstanding Achievement of Young Artists in the Philippines by the Cultural Center of the Philippines in the year 1994 at the age of 28.

Justiniani’s works have embodied and documented early on in his career, the lives of the ordinary people who live in a society of hypocrisy, contradiction, and futility. He has used his art to show a story of the Filipino people and those who had oppressed them. In his work entitled Pasan, which was created in the year 2000, the work tells a multifaceted story about Philippine history with the depiction of a man, almost camouflaged against the background, carrying a naked white man, whose bright fair skin contrasts with the dark green background which takes the viewer’s attention immediately, whose body is attached to a large dark reddish-brown wooden cross.

Pasan is a Filipino word that means “to ride on one’s back” or “to carry on one’s back or shoulder”. Burden, when translated to English, means “something that is carried” or “something oppressive or worrisome.” Pasan, the title of the work, is in itself what encapsulates the whole meaning of the oil on canvas artwork, a burden, an oppressive weight. But the oppressive weight of what? The simple weight of the man attached to the cross? Is that the burden that Justiniani referenced to in his work? Simply put, no. The weight of the man is not the full embodiment of the weight that is burdened upon the shoulders of the man hidden behind him who is carrying the weight of both the cross and his obese body. For clarity’s sake, the weight can be categorized into two factors, namely: the weight of the man and the weight of the cross. The first topic to be tackled is the weight of the man. The centerpiece of the whole work. The naked man who symbolizes the United States of America. Afterwards, the weight of the cross, a representation on how the Spanish had colonized the Philippine islands through the use of religion, specifically Catholicism. These two factors weigh heavily on the distinction that can be made throughout the entirety of the oil on canvas. Which is to say, a work filled with symbolism.

Screaming, roaring in pain, in agony. Mouth wide as if to let the viewer know of the pain that has befallen him. His cheeks tinged in pink, angered at his predicament. His hands and feet bound to the cross. Unlike the story of Jesus Christ, however, whose hands and feet were nailed to the cross, a closer look at the white man’s palms and feet show no nails that have been hammered into them. The means by which this man hangs upon the cross is unknown. Yet, his face shows pain, as if screaming in agony and suffering. The man is a physical representation of the United States of America – a country known for their population’s obesity which, from the years 1999-2000, surged to 30.5% of the population; up from the 22.9% from 1988-1994. Justiniani portrays the man as a large figure, taking up almost the entire center of the canvas. His shapely body, organic and life-like as if soft and supple to the touch, is witness to gravity pulling on its weight downwards that the stomach almost touches the floor. The softly shaded contours of his body show lumps in the fat of his arms, the fold of his large belly, and the cellulite in his thighs. Every movement and proportion hide meaning. Every line and detail, purpose. Its creation was a story, a tale of America told to every eye that bears witness to it. Note clearly, the contrast between the man and background, the former emphasized clearly as the largest of burdens. The warmth of the brightly colored skin tinged with warm yellow and pink undertones clashes with the coldness of the dark chromatic green of the background and the hidden figure. It emphasizes his importance – the life he brings out in the work. We should ask then: Why is he important? The answer is simply, of how it may be a reference to the poem of Rudyard Kipling titled The White Man’s Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands, published in the February 1899 issue of McClure’s Magazine. Through the poem, Kipling had urged the United States to take up the “burden” of empire, to as quoted “Send forth the best ye breed—go send your sons to exile to serve your captives’ needs” as what was previously done by the nations of Spain, Britain, and other European powers. To add, the publication of the poem coincided with the Philippine-American War and the U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. The poem classifies the people under U.S. rule as “Half devil and half child” and expounds on how the years of imperialism will not be thanked, that the “help” that they will give will not be gratified. Yet in the end, the white man’s burden was not his to bear. The white man’s burden is the burden of those subjugated in pursuit of their noble goal of civilization. That the arrogance and misguided nobility in the white man’s burden transfers its weight to those it seemingly wants to help, in this case, the Filipino people. At present times, the usage of the “White Man’s burden” became a euphemism for imperialism.

Moving forward, the second weight that will be tackled is the weight of the cross. The cross is known to be a symbolism for the Christian religion. The story of how Jesus Christ was crucified and had died on the cross is known by all of those who practice Chistianity. Yet, the cross further signifies Spanish colonialism in the Philippines. As it is known that through the use of religion, specifically the conversion of the native Filipino people, who were pagans, i.e. they believed in gods such as Bathala and Kaptan, to the Catholic religion. Spanish colonization in the Philippines is known as a time of oppression for the Filipino people. A racist hierarchy was even set in the archipelago that would state that those on top are the Peninsulares, Spaniards born in the Spanish Peninsula, and those at the bottom were the Negritos, the natives of the land they had occupied. The cross symbolizes that, that the Filipino people are still being oppressed due to past actions. That it is still a weight that the everyday Filipino carries with them on their shoulders. How the Filipino people still depict beauty as someone who has fair white skin, someone who has European or Western ancestry.

It is noticeable that both the cross and the man’s coloring is that of a warm shade. Shades of pink and yellow and a deep shade of red respectively. The use of warm tones to depict them as being in the same category, a category that greatly contrasts with what is behind them. However, they are both different at the same time. The white man’s shape is organic, a round body with soft edges, yet, the cross is geometric in shape, straight with sharp edges. This in short can be analyzed as, yet they are similar, they are different. They are similar in a way that they both oppressed the carrier, yet what form they did it in is completely different, i.e. the oppression through colonization and imperialism. Two ways which affected the Filipino culture and people greatly and its effects still greatly lasting.

Finally, the hidden man. The one burdened, by the weight of everything. The regular Filipino man who wears the salakot to protect him from the harsh rays of the sun during the day and the fall of raindrops when there is a storm. He who carries the weight of the aftershock of hundreds of years of colonization and rape of his country by international superpowers. His whole body almost meshes into the background, his skin only a few shades darker than the background itself, the illusion that if touched, his body would feel cold, as if like that of a corpse. His presence is barely seen compared to that of the warmth radiated by the white man and the cross. The muscles and rigidness of his arms and the stretch of his feet, specifically the one behind, shows how much strength and will the man is forcing his body to take in order to not let the white man and the cross fall onto the ground. His arms bent to a straight ninety-degree angle to support the weight above him. And unlike the white man, whose face is shown directly to the viewer, the hidden man looks onward towards his destination, his face hidden by the shadows, with his nose and mouth hardly seen if not looked at closely. His body lean, with muscles that show his laborious toil and the effects of the oppression done to him. What they’ve done to him, the horrors of the weight that can be clearly seen, is hidden away by shadows. Viewer’s are not able to even take a glimpse of his facial expression, how he feels, what is going on in his head. Viewers are only able to see the labor he is doing and the effort he is showing through the ripples of his muscles and the rigidness of his body. It shows how unnoticed the problem has become in the Filipino society. How the nation has lost so much and is still reeling from it. Yet, the problem can not be faced, so the only solution is to hold it up until it cannot be held up any longer. A weight that can never be put down unless directly confronted.

The oil on canvas in its entirety uses the space of the canvas so beautifully to express the mood and story behind everything in it. The use of the negative space to insight the toxicity of it all with the dark green clouds, as if looming over a wasteland, the destroyed beauty that it once was. The imagery that is captured through the positive space and the meaning behind the three subjects.

To conclude, this art truly resonates to me as a Filipino. The hardships that had been previously faced may be over, yet the aftershock of it has yet to diminish from the Filipino people. Filipinos, since grade school, have learned and have been taught about the effects of Spanish colonization and U.S. imperialism in the country’s culture and way of living. Yet, what was taught was merely what good they had given us, i.e. religion and education. Never was it taught that through “educating” the native Filipinos, the native languages and religion were wiped out in exchange for what is currently taught in school. So many Philippine citizens view colonialism as something wonderful, the colonial mentality of many are strong and they view that without the Spaniards and the Americans the country wouldn’t have advanced this far into the future. Those who think that way do not understand that the so-called “good things'' that came with colonization and imperialism came with a cost. The Filipino people have lost so much and have adopted so much from foreign powers that they have forgotten the true essence of what it is to be a Filipino. Filipino’s today applaud those who are devout Catholics and are fluent in the English language. Yet, they look down on the Aeta’s, they look down on people for their choices in religion, and most importantly, they look down on those who are only able to speak in Filipino. This says a lot about the Filipino society. As they lift up the ideals of those who have oppressed them, they never took into consideration their own ideals, the ideals that have been with them since before Magellan reached the Philippine shores. As the Philippines dig deeper into idolizing foreign powers, the nation has come to bury the native cultures and languages that had once flourished the lands and are now endangered to extinction.

As someone who is not fluent in Filipino, who can’t even speak the language well enough to keep a conversation with others, I know I am also at fault. I had never seen the need of being fluent in Tagalog, that if I can simply do well in my Filipino classes it was good enough for me. This mentality has been a great regret of mine. How stupid of me to think that way. How entitled I was to have viewed others, who were not fluent in English, below me due to what I believed was superior. However, as I grow as an individual, as I grow as a Filipino, I now understand the importance of our native cultures and languages. And through this work of art, I have further realized my complacency and will further take action to improve myself and be better. Not only as a student of Ateneo, but as a Filipino national.

Sources:

(1) Justiniani, M. (2000). Pasan [Oil on Canvas]. Ateneo Art Gallery. Retrieved July 09, 2020, from https://ateneoartgallery.com/collections/pasan

(2) About Mark. (2018, October 26). Retrieved July 09, 2020, from http://markjustiniani.com/about-mark/

(3) National Gallery Singapore. (2018, August 6). Artist Interview with Mark Justiniani [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/FPDuCuVWYfE

(4) Mark Justiniani. (n.d.). Retrieved July 09, 2020, from http://www.pintoart.org/mark-justiniani

(5) Thirteen Artists Awards (1970-2012). (n.d.). Retrieved July 09, 2020, from https://aaa.org.hk/en/collection/search/library/thirteen-artists-awards-1970-2012

(6) Alfaro, M. (2020). Reading Material Analysis [Word Document]. Retrieved from Ateneo de Manila University Histo 12 Readings in Philippine History.

(7) Lachenicht, S. (2019). Religion and Colonization. 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0311.

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