ALBUM Lupang Hinirang
Felix Mago Miguel | Solo Exhibition
I started the Album series five years ago, contemplating events in our history, including Jose Rizal’s assertion of our identity when he annotated Antonio de Morga’s book, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. These and many more adventures with history and culture became my continuing inspiration to dive deeper into the conversation on identity and nationhood.
The first set of artworks in the series, titled Album: Filipinas, used photographs of women during the Spanish period, which were taken as specimens and not as identifiable portraits. I took the opportunity to present them as personas of our beloved Pilipinas: strong, meek, intelligent, enduring, brave, and ready to stand for our country. I gave them not only a point of view, but names that they could carry, so that we would not forget.
The most recent set of works, Album: Walang Sugat, takes its cue from “Watang Sugat,” Severino Reyes’s 1898 sarsuwela. Originally an exposition of abuses in the Spanish era, with a love story set against the backdrop of the Philippine Revolution, the sarsuwela was considered subversive by the new American colonial government for its visual and literary connotations of a continuing struggle for independence.
The next of the Album series should have been on another historical period, but recent events have made it more meaningful for me to dive into the present, when Filipinos are already at the helm of the country, and stories are continually being made, and in some of them, I am also a participant and not just a researcher or a reader.
Traditional portraits were once exclusive to the rich and powerful, but they eventually evolved into portraying the everyday man. Now, the advent of new technologies has democratized portraiture, so that everyone who holds a smartphone can produce countless self-portraits—selfies—with the additional purpose of sharing these with whoever may want to view them, including social media platforms, where the more views there are, the more gratifying and validating they become. Before anyone else gets to comment, however, technology grants us an ability to look at ourselves and scrutinize what we see—so like the queen to her magic mirror, we say, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”
Thus, for Album: Lupang Hinirang, I would like to refer to the portraits as “selfies,” in acknowledgement of the present generation’s desire for keeping memories and self-expression, which has come to be embraced by many of the older generation, too. In recent years, selfies have become a vehicle for recording and sharing our stories. Stories of the mundane, as well as the miraculous. Stories of our nation—the Pearl of the Orient—running through 65 million storytellers holding a phone.
Bayang magiliw, Perlas ng Silanganan, Alab ng puso
Sa dibdib mo’y buhay.
Lupang hinirang, Duyan ka ng magiting; Sa manlulupig
Di ka pasisiil.
Album: Lupang Hinirang is divided into three parts: “Hayop Ka!” aka Wall of Shame, Sabungan, and Necrosis.
“Hayop Ka!” aka Wall of Shame is a set of selfies that do not refer to any person in particular, as they are named with familiar, local idioms that Filipinos reserve for encounters and interactions. Even the term “hayop” or “animal” is used to describe a personification rather than the real thing. It is actually uncanny when we talk about how “hayop” a person is: we understand it as a culture.
To refer to somebody who is brutal, savage, heartless, and/or inhuman. But more than describing an individual’s true characteristic, it is our way of expressing our anger and abhorrence. It is a term used to encapsulate our stories of exasperation and desperation.
Ironically, as in Kagalang-galang Buwaya, the animal names are prefixed with Kagalang-galang (respectable/honorable), an honorific for people whom we assume to be walking in integrity and truth, like those in government leadership positions, though at times, we cannot help but ask, Are we assuming too much?”
“Are they our leaders?” somebody asked upon seeing one of the portraits, while another said, “Maraming animal sa Pilipinas,” implying that there are lots of shameful leaders in our country. But to look at it only that way would defeat what I hope each selfie would prompt us to do: that we ask our own magic mirrors, “Who is the most shameful one of all?”
Are we in that stage where these “hayop” portraits can already describe who we are as a nation? Our lnang Bayan, our Lupang Hinirang, has seen and experienced so much corruption. Is corruption, indeed, now flowing through our veins, becoming the new reality by aggressively claiming its position as the general norm in society? Is this really where the story of Pilipinas is headed? Is this what we want?
Sabungan is a triptych with the full title Pintakasi: Ang Mamatay nang Dahil sa Iyo. It shows you two chicken-selfies flanking a sheep-selfie. The pintakasi, more popularly referred to as sabong or cockfight, is one of the country’s most beloved and addicting games, where many Filipinos play (and more recently die), whether in makeshift structures in far-flung barrios, in town-sanctioned arenas, in coliseums hosting high-stakes and international participants, or in the online-streamed fights with online betting. In many ways, sabong culture and language have extended to Philippine competitions, including elections, where your candidate is your “manok.”
The two chickens in Sabungan, Kagalang-galang Rosa Labuyo and Kagalang-galang Blanca Manok, use the colors popularized by Francisco Rodrigo’s play -Sa Pula, Sa Puti,” which tells the story of a couple trying to get out of poverty by betting in cockfights. The chickens are mediated by a person referred to as kristo (a play on the iconography of Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God)—who in the artwork is Kagalang-galang Tupa, who appears to be a meek sheep or a lamb but, in actuality, is a wolf wearing sheep’s clothing (from the warning of the Lord Jesus Himself in the Gospel of Matthew). Election time, after all, has been a boon and a bane to many Filipinos who expect to receive “gifts” from their manok, which may make life better for just a day, but with which they also gamble away the certainty of their future.
As a nation, we have been so used to looking at personalities and their colors during election time, that even our manoks don’t bother with substance anymore and, instead, regale us, covering the rest of their tracks with favors and bribes and assuming that most people either don’t care or are without capacity to discern that their campaign has become a mere song and dance. And whether they win or not when the election concludes, we somehow understand that they will eventually change colors, as their allegiance is determined by the biggest winner. In the long run, we end up as the ones fighting each other, and as the last line of our anthem says—”ang mamatay nang dahil sa iyo.”
The third section is Necrosis, composed of two artworks, the painting Necrosis: Bato, Bato, Pik and the installation piece Atang/Atang.
The large painting, titled Necrosis: Bato, Bato, Pik, employs a new lore borrowed from the cinematic genre of anime, one that a lot of the young generation may be familiar with: There is a kind of parasite/parasyte that targets humans, particularly their brains, and if successful, it gains full control of the whole body, giving it extraordinary powers to hide or unleash its monstrosity anytime.
Using our own idiom, it surpasses any “hayop” as our new “halimaw,” because the parasite with its brainless new host is capable of accomplishing much more damage.
Necrosis: Bato, Bato, Pik aims to use this metaphor for the present broken system of governance over the people it has sworn to serve and protect. Now, it has become like a wheel of fortune, keeping us guessing which of the three branches or arms of government will make the Filipinos suffer. It is uncannily accurate in the sense that this parasitical monster is only capable of control if the brain is eaten, which hearkens to a public that is kept incapacitated or uneducated enough to not be able to think critically or to discern. Are we going through necrosis as a culture and society, or can we still be saved?
Atang/At6ng is a homage to the victims of the failures of government by its action or inaction. It is an offering, as in the Ilocano atang, for all those who suffered—the desaparecidos, the executed/”salvaged,” the “collateral damages”; Filipinos who died helplessly in hospitals, in their homes, or on the streets, from hunger, from crime, from abuse, from disasters and disease, many of them lost to anonymity or neglect. It is also atang, as in the Visayan word, to wait—while we as a nation look forward to justice and transformation to finally visit us and stay. We offer to them these pandesal, the staple breakfast for most of us who are in want, and salt, not just for taste but to cleanse and to heal (and according to our own beliefs, to even fight monsters).
Though these works are but an avenue for conversation, it is my hope and prayer that positive change will come as we recognize our own participation, whether deliberate or by accident, in the continued corruption and degradation of our culture and society. And knowing where we have fallen, we then choose to do what we should. For culture is alive and dynamic; it is what we practice and live in. And it is the stories that we bring to reality today that our future will call history—or for Lupang Hinirang, her story.
Lupa ng araw, ng luwalhati’t pagsinta, Buhay ay langit sa piling mo.
Aming ligaya na pag may mang-aapi, Ang mamatay nang dahil sa iyo.
—Felix Mago Miguel August 2025
Exhibition Date
August 23 – October 4, 2025
Artist Reception
August 30, 2025 at 5PM
Catalogue
Venue:
