MANILA, Philippines - In the late '80s up to the '90s, Filipino artist Edgar ''Egai'' Fernandez was churning out large canvases that depicted the social and historical struggles that he saw in his country -- from the point of view of an angry and agonized social realist. For several decades, his right hand painted while his left fist was raised against injustices in the Philippines. He was one of the most active and versatile social realist painters among his peers at the time.
Now, at 57, he has lowered his angry fist, including his guard against (social and historical) injustices because of a new-found artistic aim: the growth of ''external and internal'' seeing which would imbue social realism with the sense of possibility and hope. Since last year, Fernandez has been in search of visual ideas on ''reflections'' -- a theme he has chosen for a show of 20 art works at the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCAA) in Manila in March. In his new art works, he has used mirrors extensively to enhance his departure from ''one-dimensional'' social realism and his adoption of a new philosophy: looking internally rather than externally; spiritual meditation rather than revolution, and mirroring reality not for reality's own sake but for a sense of possibility.
For his coming show at the NCAA, Fernandez has created a modular structure he calls 'Jacob's Ladder.' Mirrors installed at the top and lower parts of the modular structure give the illusion of a ladder that is spiraling upward and downward to infinity. An interactive piece, the viewer sees himself in the art work created to capture the Biblical narrative of Jacob and his encounter with angels that came down from heaven's ladder; Jacob wrestled with one angel and forced it to bless him (proving an infinite confidence in claiming or unlocking the kingdom's secrets). He has made a painting version of this art installation.
''For me, Jacob's ladder is all about man changing through several layers of understanding. He can do worse by going down that ladder with misunderstanding,'' says Fernandez, adding that man (or the artist, just like Jacob,) can have what he has visualized as long as he has infinite faith in his own (Almighty-aided) possibilities.
In the process, Fernandez has solved the spatial problem of representing infinity. Focusing on the wily and manly way Jacob aspired to divinity is in essence a close depiction of Fernandez's own transition from being a social realist painter with epical art pieces to an internally-looking artist who never left behind his vibrant social conscience.
One ambitious work that Fernandez has included in his Reflections series is an art installation he has titled 'Hubad sa Katotohanan (Naked Truth).' Four canvases, installed on four walls of a rectangular module, mirror each other. One painting has a nude woman, viewed frontally; its counterpart canvas is painted with a nude woman's back; another canvas shows a nude woman viewed from the perspective of her loins; its counterpart canvas shows a nude woman seen from her head.
''There is a concave mirror in the middle of the module with four canvases. When one peeps into the concave mirror, (naturally because one wonders why it is there in the first place), one sees a reflection of oneself as a speck, in comparison with the overpowering reflections of the ceiling,'' says Fernandez.
What does it mean? ''The four canvases depict man's way of seeing: by deconstructing instead of instant discernment. Man has to have four (or more) pictures to see all,'' Fernandez explains, adding that more pictures complete the real picture for man to understand reality. Conversely, for a man to understand himself, even in a willful effort to objectify his image, by looking at a mirror, he has to vanish, his image erased.
The key to happiness or to self-knowledge, lectures Fernandez, is to accept evanescence. ''All I have to do is to look into myself and understand that I am but one tiny speck in the universe. In doing that, I am no longer mesmerized by the universe; I am liberated -- not overwhelmed.''
The use of a concave mirror to erase images of those who willfully seek their images is a form of ''mystical teaching (in this installation-art),'' says Fernandez. It also underlines the difficult creative process of the artist who attempts to objectify the mysterious in a concrete way. ''Hindi lahat ng pinipinta ko nakikita ko,'' confesses Fernandez, whose daring portrayal of the vanishing image (the most important and central image to behold and exalt in mysticism), is quite surprising for someone steeped for decades in objective social realist art.
Fernandez' other art work, entitled 'Reflections on Diaspora,' is about overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). A faceless box stands on two feet; it also stands on a candle-lit path. ''I handcrafted the human-shaped candles, from wax that I collected from cemeteries last November (All Saints day),'' recalls Fernandez. The art piece has been inspired by his encounters with OFWs and in his involvement in Kanlungan Centre Foundation (a non government organization for migrant workers) in Quezon City where his partner Magdalena ''Nena'' serves as a director.
''This art work is not about me. It is an offering for the OFWs. The candles stand for my enlightenment; mga paglilinaw ko tungkol sa mga OFWs. With this art work, parang tinitignan ko kung saan ako (as far as assessing the value of the OFWs is concerned),'' says Fernandez. It is a loving and confessional piece, or a process of the artist's thoughts on exiled compatriots who are alienated abroad, but who remain intimately connected to their loved ones in the Philippines, and, despite their absence, deeply rooted in their country. In that way, they are not extinguished, unlike the candles that the artist offers to them as a form of illumination. Compassion is a key to seeing OFWs: pride not for money they send home but for the joy and light they illuminate from afar (like dead stars) where they silently suffer and die in order that their families might live. (The OFWs send remittances and fuel the country's economy with about $ 18 billion a year. This amount is larger than any single overseas development assistance from allies such as China, Japan, the United States,and the European Union).
Fernandez has made a leap from social realism to what he calls internalism in art, but for him, the metaphysics of his new works is not a separation, but a marriage of two seemingly disparate disciplines that he has embraced wholeheartedly.
His search for new artistic forms began in 2000 after a heavy night of drinking and eating chicharon bulaklak and bagnet. Suffering severe chest pains, he was brought to the Heart Center's intensive care unit where he stayed for nine days to recover from a myocardial infarction.
This was when he had an out-of-body experience, he says.
Instead of undergoing a bypass operation for two blocked arteries, he opted for physical therapy. ''While recovering, I couldn't go up the stairs. I could hardly raise my arms above my head. I was always dizzy, nagdidilim ang paningin ko''. After several physical therapy sessions, he received a contract for the refurbishment of an altar table and a lectern at the Manila Cathedral. ''Naging makabuluhan tuloy yung physical therapy ko,'' he says,
As he recovered, his artistic style also changed. ''Bumalik ako sa abstraction, which I started doing in the '70s. It was therapeutic, parang na liberate ako,'' he recalls. In 2001, a year after he got sick, he put up some abstract canvases in a show entitled 'Variations on a Theme of Light.' In 2003, he held another show of abstract works entitled 'Faces' at Rennaisance in SM's EDSA. Mega Mall. He returned to figurative art in a show entitled, 'Clowns in Our Midst,' at the Crucible Gallery, SM's EDSA in 2007, then put up another show on minimal art at Crucible in 2010.
In 1974, Fernandez astounded the art world with his large hard-edged abstract works in acrylic in a show at the Community Chest, an NGO based in Manila. He popularized modular and shaped canvases with abstract design, in a show at the Ateneo Gallery in 1975, to promote the concept of giving art buyers the freedom to re-arrange the art works they possess. His aim was to show that ''hindi kayang ikahon sa kuwadro ang buhay ng sining, kailangan kasama o kaugnay siya sa tao at sa paligid.''
''Nuong una nalito yung mga buyers. Tapos, pinapakita na nila sa akin (with pride) yung ginawa nila: Pinalitan nila yung wall dahil sa painting. Nilagay sa kisame o sa table yung painting,'' says Fernandez.
He turned to social realism in the '80s when he studied the historical and social conditions in the Philippines. 'Makatotohanan,' a six-by-eight feet art work, was a transition from abstract style to social realism. The painting depicted multiple images of a man and a woman with flaming breasts, and prison bars melting like vanishing stripes on their bodies. A skull, a book (by Amado Hernandez), a (painted) photograph of a rally, artists' brushes were included in the painting to represent the tools to liberate people. The painting was bought by the University of the Philippines College of Economics in Diliman.
A powerful piece entitled 'Hanap ay Laya (In Search of Freedom)' shown at Hidalgo Gallery in 1983, depicted a mother and child in the middle of a Philippine landscape, the mountain and the sky painted against the backdrop of an overpowering Philippine flag.
In a show entitled 'Ako'y Pilipino' at Gallery Genesis in 1983, Fernandez painted a woman offering her breast to her child, who is distracted by a toy. The woman is perched atop a pile of guns and bayonets. The canvas is ''about economic struggle versus peace; it is also about fragile peace,'' says Fernandez.
Fernandez also has a series called 'Pag-aaklas, (struggles for freedom)' and the marginalized ethnic.
''Nuon ang batayan ng paglilikha ay makabayan, makatotohanan and makabuluhan. I went an extra mile. Ever since I was doing social realist images, the mother and child were always in the middle of my canvas. The mother represented the present, the child, the future,'' he says when asked how a sense of possibility presented itself to a social realist painter like himself.
''I'm still in the social realist mode. That will not go away. What excites me now is deeper reflections on what I want to achieve. Now, I'm after answers, hope and possibilities. I have undertaken some kind of spiritual journey,'' says the artist about his new-found forms that border on mysticism.
He finds an earlier symbol of his intense sense of hope in drawings he made on the street as a child, Fernandez recalls. ''Nung bata ako, pag kumilimlim ang langit, mga kalaro ko at ako ay nagdraw-drawing ng maraming araw sa kalye Trabajo malapit sa JP Rizal (sa Makati). Laging lumalabas ang araw di pa kami natatapos magdrawing.''
Today, armed with a sense of possibility, hope and aspiration, he is emboldened to take on an active creator-participant role in his art works, which explains his recent fondness for interactive installation-art.
''If one's approach to a social (historical) problem is creative and positive, not just with angst and anger, may binabato kang solusyon sa problemang nakita mo,'' he says, adding, ''The best factor for change is something deep and internal even if the social and historical problem (that appeal for a change) are externally seen.''
Yes, Fernandez is not above preaching in his art -- social realists are adept at it given their intense sense of right and wrong about social and historical issues. But above all, he wants to share his discovery of and focus on man's sense of the divine and his limitless sense of possibilities on earth.
His Life
Born in 1954, Fernandez finished Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Philippine Women's University. He met Nena during the production of 'Pasko sa Ilaya' (in Tondo, a play written by Elynia Mabanglo, and produced by Sining Batarisan in 1975). Egai and Nena have two children: Malaya, resident artist at Sofitel, and Diwa, a freelance web designer.
Fernandez played a prominent part in the long history of social realist art in the Philippines. He was one of the founders of Kaisahan in the mid '70s, whose members composed the Nagkakaisang Progressibong Artista at Arkitekto (NPAA), the visual arm of the militant leftist organization Kabataang Makabayan. Kaisahan became a mainstay of the Center for the Advancement of Young Artists (CAYA) that was organized by Jinky Yap-Morales, estranged wife of Horacio Morales (a top government official who defected to the revolutionary left in the '70s). Fernandez was part of Artista ng Bayan (Abay) in 1985, a group that included younger committed artists. Established to serve as the advertising arm of progressive organizations, it was responsible for the creation of murals, calendars and posters for left-leaning non-government organizations. Abay died a natural death in the early '90s when the Communist Party of the Philippines split into two factions in 1983. Fernandez led the visual department of the Concerned Artist of the Philippines (CAP), a coalition of writers, visual artists, film makers, stage actors and actresses led by the late film director Lino Brocka.
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