This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 42, November
27-Dcember 3, 2005
CULTURE
Papo De Asis: Expatriate
Artist, Social Activist “My
paintings,” Papo de Asis wrote in 1992, “yearn to be the anguished expression of
a people long denied of justice and equality...The convoluted reality of my
historical past wrote the scenario to my present sources of sorrow.”
By Bobby Tuazon
In the last analysis, what is the source of all
literature and art? Works of literature and art, as ideological forms, are
products of the reflection in the human brain of the life of a given society.
Revolutionary literature and art are the products of the reflection of the life
of the people in the brains of revolutionary writers and artists. The life of
the people is always a mine of the raw materials for literature and art,
materials in their natural form, materials that are crude, but most vital, rich
and fundamental; they make all literature and art seem pallid by comparison;
they provide literature and art with an inexhaustible source, their only source.
They are the only source, for there can be no other.
-- Mao Zedong, Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, May 1942 Of all art forms, social
realism is perhaps the most challenging - it is enlightened by objective truths
and it agitates for social transformation. Dating back to the 18th
and 19th centuries, social realism focuses on social issues and the
realities of everyday life. This artistic movement, that also inspired many
American artists and painters during the Great Depression, expressed its
presence among progressive artists and cultural activists at the height of the
First Quarter Storm during the 1970s. The times would tell: The economy was in
ruins, peasants were on the march crying for land and social justice, student
activism was on the rise fueled by high tuition and police brutality, a new
patriotic guerrilla army was in genesis and Ferdinand Marcos was secretly
scheming to impose a dictatorship. At the time, the cultural
propaganda movement drew various types of people who would be politicized and
transformed by the social, economic and political conditions and would carry on
the struggle for social change to greater heights. One of them is Danilo Hubbero
"Papo" de Asis. Known to friends simply as
Papo, de Asis was born in the small town of Dumangas, Iloilo on Dec. 16, 1949.
He grew up poor from a broken family. According to Melissa Roxas, a close
associate at Habi Arts - the cultural group he helped found in Los Angeles,
California - the streets of his hometown gave him materials for his first art
works. “His canvas was the mud on
the ground and his brush was either a stick or scraps of wood he found,” says
Melissa. “ His first works of art were painted along the streets of the urban
poor communities.” In the late 1960s, de Asis
gave up an engineering course in Iloilo and sneaked through a ship bound for
Manila where he would work as an apprentice painter in Mabini Street. The
political rage of the 1970s transformed him from a commercial painter to an
activist artist and he soon found himself organizing the Mabini artists, Melissa
says. Martial law The early years of martial
law until the 1980s found him with a group of activists forming or reviving
artist groups such as Sining Bayan (People’s Art), Kaisahan (Unity, a social
realist circle) and the pre-ML NPAA or Nagkakaisang Progresibong
Artista-Arkitekto (United Progressive Artists-Architects). An alliance of
students, individual artists and out-of-school youths from the University of the
Philippines, UST and the University Belt which he was instrumental in forming
produced muralists who painted streamers and banners popularized in the
anti-dictatorship struggle. His circle of artists engaged in intensive studies
about social movements and political and economic theories and exhibited social
realist artworks in Metro Manila’s various art galleries, universities and
cultural centers. He became known as Papo, a moniker coined perhaps in jest to
reconcile contrasting descriptions of him: he was pangit (ugly) to some
acquaintances, pogi (slang for handsome) to others. “Until the day Marcos fled
the country in 1986, Papo’s group painted murals protesting the dictatorship and
helped strengthen the alliance with workers and peasants using creative
efforts,” Melissa recalls. “All this transformed Papo to paint new subject
matters, vividly portraying the ongoing injustices such as military atrocities,
summary executions and other rampant human rights violations.” Papo became an expatriate
artist in the United States in 1990 at the age of 41 but this did not deter him
from being active once more in the artist and activist community. Just like in
the progressive art movement in the Philippines, he was widely known both in the
Filipino community particularly in California - home to about one million
Filipino immigrants - as well as among the Latino, Asian, African, American, and
Persian community-based organizations and arts groups. A true-blood social realist
and proletarian artist, Papo also immersed himself in activities where he
thought his experience mattered most - holding art workshops, organizing,
advocating and mentoring a young generation of Filipino and other multicultural
artists. Papo, Melissa says, was “famous for creating murals for community
organizations and centers which he also helped establish” and until today his
works are still shown in conferences, community events and rallies. He participated at the
first Annual Festival of Philippine Arts and Culture (FPAC) in 1992 as one of
the original artists and, eight years later, was chosen by FilAm ARTS as the
Visual Arts Facilitator of the California-wide Pilipino Artists Network. He
played a key role in the formation of several art groups and collectives such as
the Alliance of Filipino Artists in Visual Arts and Animation, People’s Artists,
Sining Binhi L.A., and Habi Ng Kalinangan, a collective of artists in Los
Angeles committed to political and artistic empowerment for progressive social
change. Habi Arts Papo formed Habi ng
Kalinangan (weaving together diverse cultures or Habi Arts) as a venue for the
Filipinos’ artistic expressions, for using art in community activism and
challenging the exploitation of art for corporate and elite interests. The
emigre artist, Melissa says, saw that the problems Filipino immigrants face in
the United States “are rooted in the conditions of Philippine society.”
Habi Arts began to work alongside other artists and social justice organizations
of diverse cultures to empower the culture of resistance and struggle against
all oppression particularly in the Philippines. Close friends and fellow
artists remember the recent time they and Papo went to a retreat in Mexico.
During breaks late at night they would all sit near the shores and collect
rocks. It was so dark, Melissa recalls, that only a few waves would be
illuminated by the moon - “it was as if the whole ocean racing toward us was on
fire.” “Papo told a story about
how the rocks would move from the deepest parts of the ocean toward the shore,
some that have existed longer than even man existed, the smoothest rocks being
the oldest ones telling the oldest stories,” Melissa says. “I sat there for a
long time moved by what he said. Thinking of the history of this place
from the conquistadors all the way to the present time, and still the ocean
continues to rage like it always has, like the people still waging their
struggles for justice. Papo taught me the value to see things with this
perspective. That what seems as simple as a small pebble from the ocean
has a meaning. It is these small things that make a difference -- we are
like little pebbles in the ocean that rage toward the shore, everything in its
way catching fire, the flames that move us to continue on with the struggle and
keep fighting.” People who met Papo also
remember him for his warmth, great sense of humor, generosity and most
especially humility. Some acquaintances who had known him for years are surprise
to learn later of the awards Papo had received or that his art works were on the
cover of famous books. True sentiments But, says Melissa, “none of
these things mattered to Papo more than being able to express in his art the
true sentiments of the people in the struggle for freedom and justice. Whatever
fame or recognition came out of it, most important to him was that it helped
popularize the struggle of the people. Always very humble, he was not wont to
take the spotlight, but because of his immense talent for art, his conviction,
and because of the person he was, he became well known anyway and loved amongst
both artist and activist communities.” Since the 1970s, Papo de
Asis had held solo or joint exhibits as a visual, animation and multimedia
artist at various galleries in the Philippines as well as in Japan, China,
India, Hong Kong, Australia, Europe and in various cities in the United States -
all making him one of the most-recognized and internationally-renowned Filipino
artists in recent years. Some of his paintings are in the collections of the
Philippine National Museum in Manila and in various private collections in the
United States especially in California. Among the numerous international awards
he received is the Cultural Treasurer Award by the Los Angeles mayor.
On Jan. 8 this year, Papo
died of a massive stroke. In the United States, he is survived by his fiancée,
his son and daughters. He would have turned 56 on Dec. 16. “My paintings,” Papo wrote
in 1992, “yearn to be the anguished expression of a people long denied of
justice and equality...The convoluted reality of my historical past wrote the
scenario to my present sources of sorrow.” Ever a social realist, he
also reflected much later in Los Angeles: “Art is not a skill. This
is an irrevocable fact. It is beyond form. It is the consciousness juxtaposed
with feelings, thus become structured and created into form. These are the
innate elements of art. “Action, which is the
process of painting, is an interplay of sorrow, pain, fear, and liberation from
it which is joy, beauty and freedom. It has infinite doors in which these
opposing forces interact. “To me, my painting is a
door to open. It is for the viewer to open and discover not the artist's space
but their own dimension... “A dimension in which the
element of art and the challenges of life confront us." Bulatlat © 2005 Bulatlat
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