ABOUT THE WORK

Hugo Yonzon, Jr’s Nazareno captures in its canvas one of the most awaited religious events in the country. The procession of the Black Nazarene brings many pious Filipinos onto the streets of Quiapo, watching amongst the sea of devotees as the life-sized statue of Jesus Christ is paraded in the six-kilometer distance between the Quirino Grandstand to Quiapo church Melding both the realist and the modernist art styles, his oeuvre features a myriad of styles to the point that his son Boboy Yonzon said in a 2014 Philstar article titled My Daddy Groovy, Hugo Yonzon, the cool painter: “My dad’s friends said that Hugo was an artist looking for style, that when you saw his works you would think that you were looking at a group show.” And yet, despite this dissonance, Yonzon’s works are bound together by a commonality – his penchant for depicting the Filipino masses. His Nazareno touches upon an important point in Filipino culture: religion. With the Philippines as Asia’s largest Catholic-majority country, the religious holidays are celebrated with intense devotion, with the record of the six-kilometer Nazarene procession reaching 22 hours. It is a practice deeply embedded in the Philippine psyche and it is translated visually as eagle-eyed viewers will notice Yonzon's usage of red, blue, and yellow of the Philippine flag, effectively intertwining the country and the church in a masterful analysis of the Philippines' longstanding history with religion. (Hannah Valiente)