Accompanied by a certificate signed by the artist confirming the authenticity of this lot

ABOUT THE WORK

Michael Cacnio grew up in the 1970s in Malabon, a town with a strategic location that lay in proximity to Manila Bay and crisscrossed by the Navotas, Dampalit, Muzon, Tanza, Tullahan, and Polo Rivers. At a time when these rivers were still clean and navigable, fishing was the major source of livelihood for the town’s inhabitants. Fishponds also proliferated in Malabon, with the cultivation of bangus (milkfish) as a primary industry. Malabon owed the conduciveness of bangus farming to its fertile pond soils that naturally sustain food for the fish. This tranquil scene captivated the brush of no other than the master of the Philippine countryside, Fernando Amorsolo, immortalizing in his 1950 work titled Sunset Over Malabon Fishponds (now in the Adamson University Collection) an idyllic image of the fishing town. It is no wonder that Cacnio had also naturally gravitated to this former glorious image of his homeland, paying homage to its vibrant past in his “Nature’s Bounty Fishing Series.” In a 2014 Inquirer article titled “The Cacnio Legacy,” Cacnio shares that he had always drawn inspiration from his childhood. “As the youngest of the family, I was very carefree and playful. I was always out on the streets of Malabon playing the latest popular games,” Cacnio reveals. In Man in a Banca, from the artist’s “Nature’s Bounty Fishing Series,” one can easily imagine the boatman plying the rivers of Malabon or sitting in his firmly secured boat in the vast fishponds. He wears a beaming smile over his bountiful catch, much to his satisfaction of providing for another day’s sustenance and livelihood. Cacnio deliberately left the man’s face blank in a genuine homage to the generations of Malabonians who once sustained their everyday lives through fishing. Moreover, Man in a Banca is a poignant and nostalgic image not only of Cacnio’s childhood but of a fast-vanishing culture of sustainable livelihood. (A.M.)