Provenance: Crucible Gallery

ABOUT THE WORK

World War II left a lasting mark on Ocampo’s art, and the danger he went through as a guerilla and the holocaust he witnessed would haunt him after the war. The imagery of his ‘Flagellants’ series, to which this painting belongs, evokes the suffering and terror of the war years. Central to this sieries is the Christ figure, crowned with thorns and face covered by the flagellant’s veil, while around him are iconic reminders of the Filipino countryside. As in a dream, the hooded flagellant is not in a natural setting of country roads or city streets; instead he is in a symbolic landscape highlighted by the half buried Cagsawa church. The flagellant symbolizes sinful human beings in search of salvation in a ritual of purification — and water is the purifying element after the horrors of war — or pilgrims in quest of the truth. On another plane, the blue green depths in which the flagellants move signify the submerged subconscious’ realm which they probe in order to gain understanding of themselves.