GILDA CORDERO-FERNANDO
Same Difference: Ganon pa din ang Diperensya
10 July – 09 August 2014
Opening Reception
6-9PM, 10 July 2014
Silverlens Galleries
2/F YMC Bldg. 2320 Don Chino Roces Avenue Extension, 1231 Makati
www.silverlensgalleries.com
Silverlens Galleries is pleased to present Same Difference: Ganon pa din ang Diperensya, an exhibition by Gilda Cordero-Fernando.
Gilda Cordero-Fernando, through her art, has always made a strong case for the legitimacy of our own culture against the canon of other time-tested narratives. Beyond adaptation or mere retelling, the stories she portrays are a re-contextualization of the hieroglyphics of legends and myths into the vernacular of her own memory, history, and social milieu. Beginning with the title of her latest show in Silverlens Gallery, Same Difference: Ganon pa din ang Diperensya, it demonstrates the kind of transformation one’s culture can impose on borrowed language—a translation marked by the borrower’s sensibility, the shift towards the domestication of a concept. It is a staple device for Filipino humor, this verbal subtitling for comedic effect, reminiscent of the different generations of comic duos who have entertained audiences by processing oblique translations into punch lines.
It is the same kind of process that can be found in Gilda Cordero Fernando’s artworks, which are oblique translations of certain texts filtered in three stages: from western archetypes, to the Filipino folklore, down to its punch line—which is pop culture. Her themes are universal—the myths of creation, mother and child, romance and apparitions, which achieve localization through her deep understanding of inherent Filipino traits—wit, humor, grace, and gaiety—and are further reconstructed through personal memory and firsthand observations of the other modern traits—gossip, envy, apathy, and naiveté. It is Mother Nature addressed in mother tongue portrayed by the Fashionista Mom.
In the first series of paintings, The Aliens are Coming, she depicts different female symbols from different tableaus: the social (the Senora), the fictional (Darna), and the supernatural (Mebuyan, goddess of the Underworld). She puts them against the presence of an uncategorized being, the aliens, who are sexless, ambiguous, and sporting highly speculative existences. Their being is measured against the persona of these female archetypes who lie unfazed, indifferent, or totally naïve from any threat they might impose. In the end, the series works out as a narration of the female characters’ victory against their invaders, who in their hands have reached a violent and whimsical end—cut into pieces and skewered into sticks for roasting. It is easy to sense the hilarity in the storyline but the juxtaposition of archetypal codes, alien visions, and a banal climax make up for a new brand of mythology, a modern-day fable rendered through painting and drawing by a present-day tribe, whom in itself is faced by the contradictions and absurdity of meaning in everyday life.
In the series dedicated to the universal concept of Mother and Child, Gilda Cordero Fernando presents a succession of paintings that revolve around the theme, riddled by the nuances of her own arbitrary variations on the given subject, which has become a demonstration of how much the visual image is dependent on the written text or on a single concept. These images are elaborations of that single phrase—mother and child—and as much as the poet needs to understand that concept through different lines of thoughts, the artist/painter tries to understand it through different images composed of different colors, symbols, objects, and brushstrokes. There is the Mother and Child Against the Wind, Mother and Son on Plastic Chair, Sleepless Mom with Child, Madonna of the Papaya, The Fashionista Mom, and a few more others in varying mise-en-scene and compositions.
These scenes are gathered by Gilda Cordero Fernando to make new symbols. These are new symbols for the Madonna and Child, new symbols of the heroine; while there are also new symbols for Adam and Eve, of the animals in exodus, and of men and women in our society. These works, done in watercolor and collage, may exude traces of candidness, instinctual creativity, or a childlike simplicity in the way they fill the frame, but the task of emancipating an inherent Filipino culture through art is still no outsider’s business. And Gilda Cordero Fernando, who has waded deep into the context of her environment and the mannerisms, myths, that has shaped her own and her people’s identity, has a true insider’s track on which direction our culture is headed. “This is as it should be—“, as F. Sionil Jose has emphasized in an article affirming Gilda Cordero Fernando’s art, “the artist who refuses to be contextual is not only blind and insensitive — that artist had also lost his humanity”
Nonetheless, Gilda Cordero-Fernando would have also said: “It is the same difference. Ganon pa din ang Diperensya.” It is an oxymoron transposed to breathe a sigh of acceptance: It is the same malady. It is the acceptance of beliefs, memories, histories, fantasies, abilities, and faults. It is the recognition, on her own terms, that everything is interconnected. And it is the resolve, in her own way, to just live and do—art.
Words by Cocoy Lumbao; Image by Gilda Cordero-Fernando, The Kiss, 2013
About the Artist
Gilda Cordero-Fernando (b. 1930) began to paint at age 70. She has been writing books, columns, articles, and fiction for the past 60 years. She published the first elegant line of Filipinana books in 1977, under the aegis GCF Books. She has also produced theater pieces in the ‘80s and ‘90s, which, like her books, have won many awards.
For inquiries, contact Silverlens Galleries at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Don Chino Roces Ave. Ext. Makati, 816-0044, 0917-5874011, or info@silverlensgalleries.com. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 10AM– 7PM and Saturdays 1–6PM.
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