The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) Catalogue

Artists The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 116 Bakwit (evacuees) 2019 Site-specific mural / Benilde SDA campus, Dominga St. Malate, Manila / Photographer: Choie Funk Archie Oclos (standing, back right in black T-shirt) with students and teacher at Davao City National High School, Mindanao Archie Oclos successfully navigates the gap between street art and ‘fine art’. Based in Manila, he has travelled throughout the Philippines to create large-scale public murals that reference social and political issues — from the extrajudicial killings that have occurred with President Duterte’s war against drugs to the forced displacement of farmers and indigenous people from ancestral lands. His murals are characterised by a limited colour palette and strong, immediately legible imagery with detailed graphic elements. Oclos’s images often commence as portraits or representations of real people, and he describes his method of working as one of immersing himself within a community for several weeks, listening to stories and getting to know his subjects, before he develops the design for a mural. In 2018, he created the largest ever mural in Manila, a feat in a city known for its commissioned murals decorating public buildings such as hospitals and schools. 1 Bakwit 2019, a Tagalog word meaning 'evacuees’, depicted at vast scale a young Lumad girl carrying her baby brother on her back as well as food, water and school supplies, as she wades through a shallow river. The Lumad are the pre-Islamic, pre-colonial indigenous peoples of Mindandao, in the Southern Philippines. Many communities retreated to the mountainous regions during the colonial period, since identified as areas of rich mining resources of interest to national and foreign investors. Land grabbing and attacks on Lumad communities have been rife. Even the President has threatened the Lumad due to a perceived association with communism and their Muslim beliefs. As the title Bakwit implies, the girl is shown ‘evacuating’ her community, a frequent and common occurrence in Mindanao due to ongoing armed conflicts and paramilitary activity. Another award-winning work was Oclos’s Lupang Hinarang (Chosen Land) 2018, the title of which refers ironically to the national anthem of the Philippines. An enormous mural, Ang Mamatay ng Dahil Sa’yo (Strokes of death) 2018, was displayed outside the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), in an area that is extremely visible and busy. Using only black lines on a white surface, Oclos depicted the shrouded body of a person lying on a street, made up of 22 000 lines — equivalent to the number of extrajudicial killings that had occurred at that time since President Duterte took office. Bayang Magiliw… (Beloved country) 2018 was the gallery- based component of Lupang Hinarang , shown inside the CCP. It included a row of seven oil ‘portraits’ painted on rice sacks branded with the logos of the National Food Authority (NFA) — a charged reference, as the NFA is responsible for rice imports and reserves and has been implicated in numerous corruption and bribery scandals over the years. Each person is depicted from behind, their heads bent to one side at the same angle. Oclos based the sequence on a real family of farmers, students and activists whose story he was familiar with. Painted directly on the wall between the sixth and seventh portraits is a bullet which has killed each member of the boy’s family and speeds on its way towards him. The plight of the nation’s indigenous people — and the way that they are forced to become immigrants in a nation they are exiled within — has become of increasing concern to Oclos in his practice. Immigrants of own nation 2021, commissioned for APT10, takes up these themes, depicting a procession of people from various regions of the Philippines and religious affiliations (identifiable through customary garments or the objects they carry). While the format of the procession calls to mind a festival or religious commemoration, this gathering shows those who have been displaced. They have become, in the artist’s words, Immigrants of own nation ; the missing possessive pronoun reflects the depth of the issue they face in escaping persecution and violence and in securing a stable future for themselves and their families. Abigail Bernal Endnotes 1 The project was part of ‘The 2018 CCP Thirteen Artists Awards at Benilde’, a partnership between the College of Saint Benilde through the Center for Campus Art and the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). It was curated by Ar Gerry Torres and Karen Ocampo Flores. Archie Oclos Born 1989, Manila, the Philippines Lives and works in Manila