Accompanied by a certificate issued by Canvas.PH confirming the authenticity of this lot

Exhibited: UP Vargas Museum, Sa Ngalan ng Batas: Reflections of Philippine
law, culture, and society, Quezon City, October 4 - November 4, 2014

ABOUT THE WORK

Pasaway (stubborn) is a continuing exploration of Emmanuel Garibay's compelling ability as a storyteller of the various ills of our times. The piece is part of his 2014 exhibition at the Vargas Museum titled Sa Ngalan ng Batas, in which Garibay fosters the idea that "the legal is not necessarily ethical." In Pasaway, Garibay depicts a basketball player crossing the street while he is fixated on his cell phone. Instead of using the footbridge, the man engages in "jaywalking," a manifestation of a lack of sustainable mobility. The setting suggests the dreaded rush hour, where traffic jams, people scrambling for miserly public transportation, and private cars eating up our limited spaces are ubiquitous, wearisome sights. An enforcer can be seen managing the heavy flow of traffic. Garibay critiques a metropolis designed for moving cars (car-centric), possesses a rotten public transportation system, and inhibits people's ease of mobility. Instead of making our roads accessible and safe to everyone and developing humanizing urban designs and sustainable public transport for walkable, livable communities, those in power perpetrate car-centric policies that favor foreign car manufacturers. This is a manifestation of our semicolonial and semi-feudal society and the hegemony of neoliberal policies in lawmaking. Those in power shift the blame to the already ill-treated masses who have no choice but to bear the brunt of their inefficiency in crafting policies that should uphold and protect the people's general welfare. Indeed, those in power are the real pasaway, the plague tormenting our nation, the orchestrators of this hell on earth. The only way to radically change this society hell-bent on the self-serving interests of the ruling class is to collectively mobilize in light of our shared struggles. We must reclaim our cities, reclaim our streets, and reclaim our rights to our living spaces. (A.M.)