ABOUT THE WORK

The prevailing mood in “Sabado ng Gabi sa Libis ng Nayon” is festive, spontaneous, even happy, unlike the many dour countenances that occur in most of Manny Garibay’s other works. Many of Garibay’s paintings focus on everyday people and places. He painted ordinary people in an attempt to portray them as a political entity. In this way, Garibay’s activism showed through in his work. He truthfully portrayed ordinary people and places, leaving out the glamour that most Filipino artists added to their works. Garibay says that “it is the richness of the poor that I am drawn to and which I am part of that I want to impart in my art.” He bemoans that among the things that are central to him is the knowledge of the self — the individual vis-à-vis the community or a collective self-awareness which he feels is lacking in the consciousness of the Filipinos. In his earlier works, Garibay sought out the masses in the streets, in the jeepneys and buses, even in their basketball games. According to him, wherever people go; to school, to work, or to places of leisure, they all travel toward a destination, possibly a new life ahead, the realization of one’s self, the attainment of salvation or the failure to do so. Yet the valorization of the masses attains a new level in his more recent paintings with his addition of a religious dimension, a radicalized Christology.