Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

Several Asian cultures, including that of the Andaman Islands, believe humanity emerged from a bamboo stem. In the pantheon of Philippine mythologies, one of the more famous creation stories tells of the first man, Malakás (Strong), and the first woman, Maganda (Beautiful), each emerged from one half of a split stem of giant bamboo on an island formed after the battle between Sky and Ocean. Across the West Philippine Sea, Malaysia, a similar story includes a man who dreams of a beautiful woman while sleeping under a bamboo plant; he wakes up and breaks the bamboo stem, discovering the woman inside. From Japan, the “Tale of the Bamboo Cutter” (Taketori Monogatari) tells of a princess from the Moon emerging from a shining bamboo section. Hawaiian bamboo (ohe) is a kinolau or corporeal or bodily form of the Polynesian creator god Kane. While Tam Austria continued to use traditional themes from genre to myths as a base, in his career he built, in Manuel Duldulao’s words: “A stoic and enduring visual structure based on form, color and light.”