Sculptors of Iloilo

Iloilo is an old city on the southern tip of Panay Island. It's not far from Cebu the island in the Visayan Islands where the Spaniard Legaspi began the colonisation of the Philippines in 1521. Fragments of the city's Spanish heritage survive, some administrative buildings remain, old churches and some fine religious carving in the city's dusty museum. It's also a city of sculptors.

The sculptors studios are located at the edge of the city centre. They are shanties, built on the narrow footpaths. The size of wardrobes, they open up during the day spilling their contents and the sculptors across the roadway. A variety of sculptures are made on a commission basis, some are decorative, but overwhelmingly their work is religious ranging from life size Christ figures with folding arms used in enactments of the crucifixion to small retablo carvings. Remarkably these artists have not developed the finely honed ability to produce elaborate kitsch, such as the wood carvers of Paete near Manila. These provincial sculptors have maintained the relative innocence of the folk artist.

Walking around their studios another remarkable fact reveals itself. This is a dynasty of sculptors dating back to 1950. So along with Roming and Larry Maranon, we have nephew of Maranon and Tony Maranon, who is said to be the original Maranon. Today his grandson works in the studio. These are the doors from his studio, painted like most of the other studio doors with religious images. Along the street, there is Christ, The Holy Trinity - the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and this pair, Jesus and Mary.

This is a potent image that is found almost everywhere in the Philippines, from the antique Spanish era cathedrals to the sides of jeepneys but it is rarely painted with the depth of devotion displayed here.  Interestingly, it achieves a dual divinity in the vernacular of Christianity practised along the streets of the cities and in the provincial barrios of the Philippines where religious objets are called Anting Anting.  These objects combine reinterpretations of Christian religious iconography and pagan mysticism to satisfy a deep and popular religious need. In these bottles that are made by the prisoners of Iloilo jail and sold at street stalls near the sculptors studios, we have a representation of Jesus as both male and female in the form of magic potions.

The stalls selling Anting Anting also sell various herbal products, snake skin and other animal parts, rocks, crystals and amulets. These are medallions that repackage misquoted liturgical text and religious imagery with nationalist politics as shields against adversity. This small amulet is very common, widely available and of particular interest because it represents Malakas and Maganda, the duality of strength and beauty. It appears in several regional Filipino mythologies as the story of God splitting a stick of bamboo to reveal an Adam-and-Eve-like duality that is the origin of all Filipino people. Its Christian reflections, is the sacred male / female relationship of mother and son, offering a clue in a reading of these doors painted by Tony Maranon.

Tony Twigg