No shade but your shadow

Philippine history is a tale, whether fact or fiction, steeped with institutional ruling powers of colonial structures. Norberto Roldan’s tapestries juxtapose power, the power to disengage and the power to democratize. Roldan’s SILVERLENS presentation for this year’s Artissima is a reflection of such power. Power as a force of people’s wants and desires and as a force of persistence and resistance.

The Philippines was ruled by Spain in 1896 and lasted for 333 years. Spanish authorities discovered a local underground organization, the Katipunan. An organization engaged in covert operations to spread revolutionary ideologies, one of which disguised themselves as undercover Christian converts.  Navigating and gaining strength through the Spanish- Catholic church, the Katipunan gained support from the people.

While postcolonial Philippines exist as a predominately Catholic society, a syncretic belief system is common practice. As colonial rule began to wane, Iglesias del Ciudad Mistica de Dios, was established and continues to be a thriving open community. Established at the base of Mount Banahaw in Quezon province, this religion provides a counter discourse in Philippine religion. Animism with folk catholicism is their religious practice. But also, all the while, and quietly with a female leader at the forefront.

Roldan is not a stranger to the histories and issues surrounding Philippine Roman Catholic Church. Growing up in a rural part of the Philippines, where a son either grows up as a doctor, lawyer, or a priest, Roldan spent his youth in a seminary with intentions to become a priest, until he later on decided to pursue fine arts. Armed with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communications at the University of Santo Tomas, and later on finished with a Masters Degree in Art Studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Roldan is a prominent senior figure in the Philippine art scene, having represented the Philippines in international museums and galleries such as Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York City), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), among others. Roldan also co-initiated Green Papaya Art Projects and VIVA Excon (Visayas Islands Exhibition and Conference), the Philippines’ longest running independent artist-run initiative and biennial, respectively.

Roldan’s practice weaves the narrative of the revolution with elements of Catholicism. Taking inspiration from traditional Catholic ceremonial vestments, Roldan re-embroiders and re-embellishes contrasting symbolisms of the uprising; integrating revolutionary flags and masonic imageries with symbols of Jesus Christ and fleur-de-lis. Roldan labels the tapestries with fictional churches, such as the Iglecia de la Liga Filipina, as a nod to battle flags rallying resistance against colonial rule.

In one set of works, Roldan embroiders over patadyong, a pre-Hispanic loose skirt often worn by women of the Visayas region. Embellished on these skirts are traces of Philippine colonial and pre-colonial history; images of rosaries, native materials, and Philippine gods.

Much like the Katipunan and the Ciudad Misticas, Roldan integrates past and present to spring new appropriations and interpretations, subverting colonial power from one that disenfranchises the colonized to one that can be questioned and changed. With the use of Catholic and historical iconographies, Roldan is able to thread his background as a seminarian in an examination of a nuanced colonial past. A past that constantly is characterized not only by trauma and struggle, but also appears to also tell a story of interconnections and persistence.

Words by Arianna Mercado

Norberto Roldan (b. 1953, Philippines) has represented the Philippines in various international exhibitions in the Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the US, and in international symposia and conferences on independent art spaces and artists' initiatives. He was represented in two landmark surveys of Southeast Asian contemporary art: New Art from Southeast Asia 1992 by the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, and Negotiating Home History and Nation: Two Decades of Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia 1991–2011 by the Singapore Art Museum. He was also represented in two recent acquisition exhibits, No Country: Contemporary Art For South/Southeast Asia at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2013, and in Between Declarations and Dreams, National Gallery Singapore, Singapore in 2015.

Roldan is currently a practicing visual artist and artistic director of Green Papaya Art Projects, an independent multidisciplinary platform founded in 2000.