Ronnie Granja’s Tamwa at the Puly-an Art Gallery features 13 genre paintings of various sizes in both acrylic and oil on canvas. The collection shows tales of the everyday lives of people in a boarding house, captured by the artist as a dweller for 13 years.

The word Tamwa (or Támwà) means to look out of the window in Hiligaynon, and the exhibit poster allegorized the artist’s process of looking back, using a blurred photo of Granja looking out of the window, inferring self-reflection with the intention to impart lessons on social behavior and relationships in a social institution, the boarding house.

The works invite the eyes to pan in and out on each of the pieces, and the titles create a perception (if not a conclusion) of the narrative they attempt to convey.

Social behavior in the realm of social psychology, explained psychologist Ford Henry Allport, focuses on the individual and his relation to other individuals, and this is what makes Tamwa a compelling narrative of individual behaviors, told in painting by Granja, who is not merely a careful observer but an engaged character in the story.

The various elements—space, time, and the social interaction of characters—that come into play in the collection render Tamwa a valuable work for examination. 

The collection is summed up by the centerpiece, Saramputan (front porch). It shows the boarding house as an open space for people of differing backgrounds, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, class, or gender. One of the crucial elements in Saramputan is the depiction of the density of occupants in one space—a critical ingredient not to be ignored, for it establishes the socio-economic feature of the space, thereby typifying its occupants by their class in society.

Saramputan also effectuated the discourse on social behavior and gave it a larger view, that of socio-economic class behaviors, through the physical structure and set-up of boarding houses: from small houses utilized as dwellings, private dormitories, and apartments co-rented by boarders, to multi-level boarding houses and even condominiums today. While these spaces share the same function of offering a temporary abode, they differ in the quality of facilities, conveniences, privacy, and security, showing the financial ability of their boarders. Boarding houses, as a structure, now define the class that they represent in society and, expectedly, their behaviors.

In Tamwa, the boarding house caters to lower-middle to low-income bracket families, if not the poor. The high density of people under one roof, together with the set-up of common facilities like the front porch, living room, dining room, kitchen, toilet, and bath, serves as compelling factors for interaction. Smaller spaces intensify interactivity and increase the frequency of reciprocity, normalizing social interaction and fostering physical and behavioral familiarity.

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Familiarity is the first step in cultivating camaraderie, developing personal closeness among boarders, and shaping collective memory. Imagine how many families were formed through social interaction in boarding houses. For some, life in the boarding house was their first association with a social group, essentially forming their understanding of extended family and support systems, class conflict, and gender awareness through female and male segregation and by recognizing gays and lesbians among them.

Indubitably, some of these occupants may have come and gone at a certain point in time. Yet the work shows that specific personalities have left lasting impressions on the artist’s memory, considering seclusion or affinity with each other. Relationships like this, explained Allport, are developed through the co-acting, reciprocal, and co-reciprocal nature of social interaction.

Ronnie Granja’s Tamwa also used time as a marker of a particular social behavior.

Sembreak, for instance, marks the end of an academic period and is where students usually let loose to celebrate accomplishments and go back to their provincial homes for vacation and to help the family. On the other hand, Augusto (August) denotes the mid-month of the third quarter of the year, which is considered a lean month in the calendar, and it purports to be an economically challenging period, prompting prudence in spending. The end of the month, or Tapos Bulan, connotes a breather for workers, implying payday; hence, a period to settle the bills and for boarding house owners to collect monthly rent.

It illustrates the cyclical nature of life, like seasons in the calendar that follow a pattern: semestral break, lean month, and payday, as a prognosis of social behavior and by interpreting positive behaviors as a determinant of a good outcome, as shown in the work Tutom-Tutom (dedicated), which connotes that an optimistic mindset serves as a key to a better future.

It is worth pondering, however, the use of “labeling” in the titles, as demonstrated by the works Si Papang, father, father figure, or sustainer; Surprisa kay Pastor, which shows expression of religiosity or admiration for a religious leader; Ikrat, playful, flirty, or seductress; and Rhona, a prominent person whose simplicity or vanity remained in the memory.

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In the age of social media, labeling is treated as a language that serves as identity tags, a method of stereotyping people using aliases that form alternative identities that are carried over time—Ikrat and Si Papang, in this case, invite double meaning, and the art runs the risk of being misinterpreted or its message misconstrued by a viewer.

Likewise, labeling touches on the practice of shaming and stigmatizing people, and, unwittingly, it may misrepresent the person considering their personal transformations and development. One example that readily comes to mind is the popular term “Marites” to describe gossipmongers and those who engage in rumormongering.

Labeling may have been applied by the artist in Tamwa to reflect reality or as a matter of instinct. This particular element in the collection is by itself a subject of social behavior study, and American sociologist Herbert Blumer offers a sociological perspective that aids understanding of its application in Tamwa.

Labeling is a social creation, explained Blumer, formed “from social interaction through communications” among individuals in society. Blumer discussed labeling theory in criminology as part of “symbolic interactionism” with Horton Cooley and Howard Becker, among others, in relation to the study of deviance, defined in sociology as violation of rules and conventions.

In the context of Tamwa, labeling among peers is simply a practice of association or belongingness, a language and practice among groups of people, like in the boarding house, to mean that “you’re one of us.” It is therefore incumbent on the viewer of the collection to situate Ronnie Granja’s Tamwa in its own space and time to fully comprehend and appreciate its lessons.