Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

Exhibited: Generalitat Valenciana, “Cien Anos Despues (One Hundred Years After)”, Spain, 1998 Museo dela Iberia y Latino-America, Spain, 1998 Spanish Cultural Centre, Cuba, 1998 Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico, 1998 Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila, 1998 Hiraya Gallery, "Masa Kultura", Metro Manila, 1998

ABOUT THE WORK

As one of the foremost artists working in the vein of Social Realism, Alfredo Esquillo has cast a hard light on societal ills, especially those concerning faith, religion, and belief. In this work, Eksit sa Itaas, Esquillo portrays ordinary folks as they navigate the labyrinthine spaces of day-to-day life. While every swing door has an “Exit” sign, it leads to the self-same enclosure, trapping them. Part of their navigation is their avowal of faith, which is represented by Crucifix adorned with garlands of sampaguita and held aloft by a Black Nazarene devotee, who is identified by his maroon shirt. Most of them wearing gas masks or holding handkerchiefs to their faces, they are assailed by an equivocal stench. Only the woman, whose determination to get to the end of the maze is visible on her expression, seems not to mind, all the while carrying an infant. Seeming unaware and detached from the commotions below is a long-haired flutist — a modern-day Orpheus. Lying among cardboard clouds, he seems to have transcended the people’s quotidian concerns — an image of leisure and inactivity that is a stark contrast to what is transpiring below him. Eksit sa Itaas, in a way, is an allegory of the alternative solace of art, if we are to consider that religion, as how Karl Marx puts, is the opium of the people. Eksit sa Itaas made the rounds of cultural institutions, such as the Generalitat Valenciana (Valencia, Spain), Museo dela Iberia y Latino-America (Badajoz, Spain), Spanish Cultural Centre (Havana, Cuba), Ponce Museum (Puerto Rico), and the Cultural Center of the Philippines (Manila) before it was exhibited at Masa Kultura, Esquillo’s first solo exhibition, at the Hiraya Gallery in Manila in 1998.