ABOUT THE WORK

Tojo Barja’s latest exhibition at Blanc Gallery, In the Land of the Living, recreates a world through seeing: his paintings unfold like an eyewitness’s account of his plight alongside the common folk, who have endured the anomalies and alienation of modern life, people who have decided to live on despite the land’s persistent call for desolation. It is projected through an anomaly of tones inside the frame—the damp hues of their skin in blue and grey juxtaposed by lively colors of bright red and green from an ornament of props these corpse-like figures possess. His portraits are also livid in their appearance, creating a sense of stupor amidst their bold gestures: a father cuddling his child, a construction worker holding on to a lone flower stem, children standing pompously from the throes of their innocence—these are characters that pervade the artist’s sight. These are characters that have been spotted and seen and are persistently viewed in the mind’s eye. Looking is a process that has affected Barja at an early age. Through his mother, who constantly told him to ‘look,’ he has acquired the habit to latch onto appearances, not as a way of judging, but of perceiving meaning beyond one’s intuition. He has learned early in childhood the discrepancies of the visual realm. Having lived in an isolated community—sanitized and neatly arranged, while at the same time adopting for his home the depressed area on the other side of the wall, he has seen the stark contrasts of the neatly arranged houses against the volatility of shanties sprouting from the ground, the clear, white tenements against the burnt tones of plywood and rust, and the orderly life against the quandary found in freedom and pleasure. In the Land of the Living, Barja’s art has evolved via another exodus—as a witness to the aftermath of a typhoon, the great flood which had submerged the city, where his colors have turned from ochre and sienna to the bloated hues of blue and grey. While wading through the flood a realization takes place: how everything can be quickly submersed, and how delicately the line is drawn between survival and extinction. The pattern of images and sequence of sceneries from Jojo Barja’s latest works are vestiges to this idea of clinging on to the fine thread that separates life and death. And through these depictions of life, he tries to infuse more life by constructing dioramas and soft sculptures. This is the world Jojo Barja has reconstructed for us to see—a world sulking in drab tones, and long faces, yet disrupted by sudden flashes of bright colors, hinting some hope against their quiet desperation. And more importantly, for the hope it imparts—is the hope that there is still room for a new way of depicting the plight of the common Filipino. -Cocoy Lumbao