Literature:
Flores, Patrick D. and Cid P. Reyes. BenCab:
Filipino Artist. Tuba, Benguet: BenCab Art
Foundation Inc., 2019.
Featured on the book’s cover,
full-color illustration.

ABOUT THE WORK

In October 1972, Benedicto Cabrera staged his landmark homecoming exhibition at The Luz Gallery after an almost four-year diaspora in London. Titled Larawan: 1972 Paintings by Bencab, the exhibition not only marked the artist’s maturation after the critical acceptance of his Sabel paintings of the 1960s but, more so, solidified Bencab as a critical painter of his times. Bencab was young, but he was also bold, brash, and keenly aware of his Filipino identity and sensibility, which he understood best through the lens of the colonial past. Through his Larawan paintings, the eminent art critic Alice Guillermo christened Bencab as a forerunner of Philippine social realism. The 1972 suite of Larawan paintings would be followed by a sustained pursuit of depicting the Filipino in different periods of their history: the Larawan II of the late 1970s depicting the Filipino in diaspora and the Larawan III of the late 1990s that coincided with the centennial of Philippine independence and focused on the wardrobes of the late 19th century, much like the tipos del pais fostered by the likes of Spanish colonial era painters Damian Domingo, Jose Honorato Lozano, Justiniano Asuncion, and Felix Martinez. Fast forward to the 2000s, Bencab has already become synonymous with his Larawan series. He has found a way to relate many of his current Larawan works to the earlier ones, a continuing endeavor of mirroring the present with the colonial past. I No Longer Worry is one of Bencab’s major works throughout his nearly six-decade artistic career. It was even chosen to become the cover of BenCab: Filipino Artist, Volume 1 of the artist’s twin-volume book published in 2019 in celebration of his “Fifty Creative Years.” In this work, an ordinary indio dons a camisa de chino, a European-style hat, and pants (salawal) rolled up to just below the knees, indicating that he is in the act of toiling. His face and body language both exude radiance, comfort, and satisfaction. I No Longer Worry can be best appreciated when compared with a thematically similar work from Bencab’s first Larawan Series. The 1972 acrylic on paper work titled Ang Tao (now in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Collection) depicts an old man donning the same outfit, albeit he is wearied. His overall expression poignantly evokes suffering and dispiritedness, with him holding his hat on his side emphasizing a sign of resignation—a wrenching acceptance by a people subjugated under colonial oppression. Both Ang Tao and I No Longer Worry are in vertical orientation, emphasizing the subjects’ stature and nurturing a deep reflection of our complex history and relationship with our Filipino identity. Three decades later, in the picture of I No Longer Worry, the man has been restored to the glory of an exuberant youthfulness. Taking cues from the work’s title, I No Longer Worry sees Bencab fostering the notion of accepting our collective identity as being shaped by our colonial history and reclaiming what is genuinely ours, a continuing struggle and assertion of our uncompromising identity as lovers and stalwarts of freedom. In Ang Tao, the subject still grapples with his identity as an inhabitant of Las Islas Filipinas, hence the generic term “tao” (person). But in I No Longer Worry, the indio has now grasped that complex yet profound sense of his identity that is rooted in colonial subjugation, watered by the ideals of nationalism and the national revolution against a common oppressor, and nourished by a continuing declaration of no longer capitulating to foreign hegemony. The modern Filipino is a product of centuries of colonial rule, a power whose vestiges and influences still resound in modern times. And it is these palpable influences where I No Longer Worry situates itself—the Filipino masses are no longer worried about navigating a sense of shared identity to pursue a shared struggle towards a shared cause for a genuine expression of liberty and self-determination. I No Longer Worry enkindles a continuing reclamation of our Filipino identity to shape future generations of Filipinos who no longer worry on resigning to one’s fate as a subservient servant to imperial power. In 2006, Bencab was proclaimed National Artist for the Visual Arts. (Adrian Maranan)