Exhibited:
Pinto Gallery, 1998
UP Vargas Museum, Walang Sinasanto, Quezon City,
February 13 - March 15, 2013

Literature: Beller, Jonathan. Acquiring Eyes: Philippine Visuality, Nationalist Struggle, and the World Media System. Ateneo de Manila University Press. Quezon City. 2006. Full-color illustration listed as "Fig. 22" on the book plates. Flores, Patrick. Walang Sinasanto: Emmanuel Garibay. Retrospective catalog. UP Vargas Museum. Quezon City. 2013. Full-color illustration on page 37. Garibay, Emmanuel. Where God Is: The Paintings of Emmanuel Garibay. Overseas Ministry Studies Center (OMSC). USA. 2011.

ABOUT THE WORK

Emmanuel Garibay, one of the country’s foremost Figurative Expressionists, is known for a body of work fired by a genuine, often times searing , political and social commentary. This consciousness was formed by his roots in Kidapawan, North Cotabato, by his exposure to the rituals, flaws and possibilities of the Catholic Church, by his involvement and study of peasant and labor movements. In the 1980s, he became a member of Artista ng Bayan, an artist’s collaborative group devoted to documenting the lives of dispossessed and marginalized. Then, in the 1990s, together with Figurative Expressionists, Emong Borlongan, Mark Justiniani, Tony Leaño , Ferdie Montemayor and others, they established the Salingpusa group, with their home in Dr. Joven Cuanang’s Pinto Gallery in Cubao. Garibay was given his first show there in 1993. “Black Saturday” is from Garibay’s landmark 1998 solo show, also at the old Pinto Gallery. In this large, signal work from his early period, Garibay chose to go against the very trend he and the other members of Saling Pusa had set with their pointed and ironic use of historical , social, indigenous and nationalist imagery to make their artistic statements. In “Black Saturday” , Garibay deliberately veered away from the figurative . Instead, he created a work where allegory and metaphor took precedence over figures. This is also the first major work in which the Christ’s nail-pierced hands would appear ,a symbol of human suffering as well as redemptive unity. The motif has been repeated in many of Garibay’s other works, both large and small. But none with so dramatic and salvific an effect than in this work. The painting takes it mood and meaning from the sombre, restless mood of Black Saturday. Between the horrific passion of Good Friday and the glorious resurrection of Easter Sunday is this one day in the liturgical calendar when no masses are said. Christ is dead, the apostles in hiding, all seems lost or in limbo. The painterly narrative that is a signature of Garibay’s works is nowhere to be found. Instead, there is a montage of images that confound us, speaking all at once. The mourning women of Jerusalem stare out with cold, dead eyes. Their savior has not yet risen. Hidden among their cloaks and veils are the symbols of a past that cannot be discarded: heroes of our own aborted revolution, decadent princes of the church, shadows and harlequins. Rising above this mass is a death mask, and above that, the ruins of structures (Churches? Palaces of the wealthy? Or simply the empty “Whited sepulchres” that Christ used as a metaphor for religious hypocrites? “Woe unto you for ye are like whited sepulchres, beautiful outside, but within are bones and all uncleanliness.”) All these come together in an allegory of our own unfulfilled hopes. Will there be an awakening? Will religion and the resurrection be enough to move us forward from this all-enveloping state of national/spiritual/moral lethargy? Will the “Whited sepulchres” stand forever on the suffering of those who mourn? This most unique of Garibay’s works painting may lack a clear and distinct narrative. Instead there is a canvas teeming with questions. As well as with hope, for despite the rot and the stasis, the hands of Christ envelope and accept all human frailty. In his essay, “Recognizing the Stranger” The Art of Emmanuel Garibay”, the Australian writer Rod Pattenten summed up the artist’s unique place in Philippine Contemporary Art history. “Unlike many artists shaped by Christianity, who simply dress the bible in their own ethnic clothing, Garibay has probed deeper into the collisions between the ministry of Jesus and the nature of power.” He added, “Garibay is an artist of his time, when art, power, religion and politics clash.”