Antipas Delotavo epochal work is showed in Iloilo Variants, his first solo since he left his hometown to study Fine Arts in Manila in the 1970s. 

It was an unusual daybreak on May 1, a Labor Day. Luna Street in La Paz district was empty of people, and the road was sparse with vehicles. You can see the sun dramatically lighting up over the horizon of the Forbes Bridge, its ray inching on the ground towards the pedestrian overpass that connects the Gaisano Mall and Petron Gas Station.

The aura of what appeared to be an ideal morning—cool breeze, peaceful, and calm—was altered by fear and anxiety. Loud, desperate cries echoed in the vicinity—Josko! Josko! Bulig! Buligi Ninyo! (Oh my God! Help! Help them, please!).

The few women who were off for work, waiting for the jeep in front of the Porras Memorial Homes, sprinted towards the overpass. Their screams awakened the neighborhood. People scampered from different directions: Huervana St., Laguda, residents at the back of Porras, and those from the far end of the mall.

Private vehicles and jeepneys stopped, and some passengers alighted reluctantly; others made the sign of the cross, murmuring prayers.

You can see shock on their faces. They were all looking up. Three human bodies were hanging from the overpass. Donning overalls, a note on their necks read, “Workers Dead”. 

The seconds that followed saw some brave souls run through the stairway in an attempt to untie the rope, but it was too tight and heavy.

The crowd that gathered later realized that the panic was a radical Labor Day dramatization of the plight of the Filipino working class, a critique of the capitalist system, the oppressive free market economy, and the anti-labor policies of the regime of then-Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The Workers Dead predicated my second viewing of Antipas Delotavo’s Iloilo Variants. They are two separate events, in different forms and times, yet they share a common subject, imagery, message, and meaning. The former was a fleeting creative action, while the latter is an enduring visual essay and commentary rendered by Delotavo in great detail.

Iloilo Variants is Delotavo’s first solo show in Iloilo since he left in the 1970s to pursue Fine Arts studies in Manila. Hence, it offered a brilliant opportunity to study and reflect on his work. The curator’s talk of Jose Tence Ruiz indulged the audience in the ‘two persevering facets that made up his masterpieces: first, salient juxtaposition that shows two opposing ends in the composition, an effective didactic method; and second, shock-of-recognition portraiture that depicts everyday people’s facial expression and body language with photograph-like precision.

Also about Iloilo Variants exhibition: Antipas Delotavo’s juxtaposition of worlds

These facets demonstrate Delotavo’s distinct social realist touch, and two of the works, which are 44 years apart, highlight these identifiable marks: Itak sa Puso ni Mang Juan (Watercolor, 1978) and Royal Street (Oil on Canvas, 2022), the centerpiece of the exhibit.

Tence Ruiz also superbly applied the juxtaposition method for his talk, effectively aligning Delotavo’s professional advancement with the progress of the social realism art movement in the Philippines through a careful selection of critical paintings that reflect the socio-political milieu of the time, traversing from the Martial Law years up to the seven post-1986 EDSA governments, and situating domestic events within the global neo-liberal economic order.

In essence, the talk equipped the viewer on how to read social realist art vis-à-vis an orientation of Delotavo’s composition, characterization, colors and form, symbolism, setting, subject matter, and the period of time created. It heightened the audience’s understanding of the juxtaposition as a composition technique that is uniquely Delotavo’s way of conveying messages and meaning, using art as a medium to raise public awareness and educate the public about social phenomena.

Also read:UPV MACH receives Delotavo painting, Tence Ruiz’ Litanya

The photo essay exhibited Delotavo’s timely commentaries, which bared the interrelationship of politics and economy (political economy) and its consequences for ordinary Filipinos and workers. This is depicted by Sakuna (1977), Itak sa Puso ni Mang Juan (1978), Bulong na Umaalingawgaw (1983), Tagisan (1987), Trompe L’Oell and Retorika (2004), Diaspora (2007), Yellow Box (2008), Agos ng Ilog Bantaoay (2015), and Domination (2020), among other masterpieces.

These works effectively articulate the sentiments of Delotavo, who is a person of few words, and they renewed the audience’s appreciation for the role that political art plays, offering a good reflection among stakeholders in a city that prides itself on being an art capital but is scant of social realism art or popular art that criticizes the Establishment and the powers that be.

The focus on political art reminded me of Alice G. Guillermo’s discussion on social realism and the ideologies of art in her essay Marxism and Ideological Strategies (Marxism in the Philippines continuing engagements, 2010).

Political art in the Philippines, said Guillermo, does not follow a particular style, and any style, for that matter, can be a vehicle for political content. However, there is a preference for social realism because it is a style of representational art related to contemporary issues and concerns, thereby conveying a message with greater clarity to a larger audience.

Social realism as a style that can connect to a larger audience is an illuminating point, for it brings to light the mysterious element of Delotavo’s work, the unobtrusive soulfulness it possesses, and the power of his work to touch the heart of a viewer. It provides a philosophical grounding on Delotavo’s statement during the exhibit opening night that, for him, “there is no high art or low art, for as long as an artwork touches your heart, it is the best art in the world.”

Moreover, political art directed my attention to two intrinsic ingredients of Delotavo’s work. First, his sensibilities were shaped by the social realities of everyday life, having subsisted in the populous barangay of Rizal Estanzuela in Iloilo City and also in the rural farm community of Pototan, where he spent vacations. Growing up in these settings bequeathed images of poverty and raised his awareness of the social classes of society. The profundity is evident in his renditions that show their dispositions through facial expressions and body language, which is now labeled “shock of recognition portraiture”—a characteristic that, for me, can only be attained by an artist with an intimacy and partiality toward the poor and marginalized in society.

The second ingredient is ideology. This is a facet that was reluctantly pursued during the discussion after the talk. However, ideology is a prominent feature of Delotavo’s five-decade oeuvre. The power of Delotavo’s art is not only because of his command of style and subject, but also because it is moored in Marxist ideology.

It is in this context that Delotavo’s work requires a Marxist approach instead of the usual contextual approach when inquiring about or appreciating his works.

Again, said Guillermo, a Marxist approach is “imminently applicable to art, because art, the visual arts, music, architecture, theater, film, and the popular arts seem to naturally call for a contextualist approach,” an approach that is rather a euphemism for those who are afraid to use Marxism or socialism as a lens for a defined social, political, and moral stand, says Aurora Roxas-Lim in her review of Guillermo’s essay.

The contextualist approach was perhaps the reason why the audience was averse to pursuing discourse on ideology to arrive at a more meaningful discussion with the artist and the curator. As such, the dialogue meandered on a scholastic subject like “what is art for art sakes” or on the more common dilemmas of populist activist and non-conformists  like “how do social realist artists navigate capitalist spaces like ILOMOCA”. 

Understandably, as a Marxist artist, Delotavo possesses the sophistication of a revolutionary to navigate through various terrains, both friendly and adversarial, to attain his objective of conveying a message to the intended audience. His consistency on the subject and medium, despite his personal economic growth, is compelling evidence that his life and practice are anchored on ideology.

Revolutionaries are not reluctant to engage at various levels to accomplish a mission, and Delotavo’s solo show carries a mission as much as his five-decade practice. We were not looking at Delotavo as an abstract artist but rather as a social realist, and his work in Iloilo Variants was a statement to the Establishment. It was not only about heritage structures that share a rich past and the looming skyscrapers that propound the future or a critique of some politician or a local elite; the collection depicts the basic social contradictions of capital and labor and class politics.

The collection exposes the historical ills and the ongoing exploitation of the capitalist system, which was highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic and succinctly represented by the work Domination (Oil on Canvas), which showed the Lizares Mansion gates with an ironwork arch above them “harking to the stockade entrance of the Holocaust Auschwitz Camp, with an English translation of the sardonic phrase Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Sets You Free),” described by Ruiz.

Substantively, Iloilo Variants is a play of signifier and signification, or what Guillermo described as semantic potential within what Eagleton calls the “horizon of meaning”. The paintings attempt to simplify the complexities of capitalism, but not to the point of over-simplifying the subject matter, to remind us of the system that is seemingly invisible yet endures as the underbelly of our functioning and existence, a system that energizes Iloilo’s march to new development, including the bourgeoning of the local art scene.

Iloilo Variants shows the epochal work of Delotavo in this critical time in a city of his childhood that is undergoing modernization, this time, however, through the solidifying unity of its unshaken elite and sovereign middle class, who are enjoying economic wealth and art.