Provenance: A gift from the artist to the present owner

ABOUT THE WORK

Waifs, street urchins, vendors, race track hands and bettors, prostitutes, neighborhood gamblers and other city folks who had to swallow a lot of life’s bitter reverses – they are Onib’s folks. They live and die each day. Rather, they live for each day knowing that they will survive the next as they have survived the present. On their faces are not the vestiges of sufferings itself but a silent pride in knowing that they can endure what they have to do and we, the viewers, do not have as much right to complain as we do.