Anger, violence, and hope in 'Imprint: Images of Impunity'

The launch of the art exhibit “Imprint: Images of Impunity” last Feb. 9 at the Sining Kamalig Gallery may have overflowed with artists, students, and human rights advocates, but the absences of the handful of victims of impunity were all the more pronounced.

 

The exhibit was organized by the End Impunity Alliance, and showcases some 59 paintings, sculptures, art installations and photographs that, according to alliance convenor Tinay Palabay, "seek to give visual flesh to the state of impunity in the country."

 

Anger and frustration were flagrant in most of the artwork on display. For instance, artist Kiri Dalena’s series of gravestones engraved with protest cries were so deliberately unadorned that the rage in their remonstrations were all the more pronounced.

 

Some works were calculatingly violent, covered in red streaks and gruesomely dehumanizing their all-too-human subjects by disembodying them, cutting off a finger or disconnecting limb from limb as if to call attention to the sheer violence that victims of human rights violations experience at the hands of their captors.  

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Other works were more sad than livid, choosing to pay tribute to the missing and dead by rebuilding their likenesses with canvas and paint, or a collection of curios that represent them.

 

One art installation in particular chose to forego the violence and the anger and chose instead to depict hope in a spread of colorful flowers that seemed to blossom smack in the middle of the gallery’s concrete floor.

 

“When the End Impunity Alliance initiated this project, we wanted to make clear that in this era of Facebook, Twitter, and iPhone 4s, such barbarism which impunity promotes exists,” Palabay said.

 

Aside from raising awareness and promoting the cause, the exhibit will also extend financial support to victims of human rights violations, particularly to University of the Philippines students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño, who were abducted in 2006 and have not been found since.

 

“Itong exhibit na ito ay meron ding layunin na makatulong sa pamamagitan ng pagbigay ng proceeds ng mga artwork sa legal and campaign fund ng kaso ni Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan,” said Dalena, also an alliance convenor.

 

Retired Major General Jovito Palparan was indicted for Cadapan and Empeño’s abduction last Dec. 2011. He had since gone into hiding, and is the subject of a nationwide manhunt.

 

Among the artists and advocates who attended the launch were Nina Ricci Alagao who read National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera’s “The Seventh Month Since Ampatuan Massacre,” and Evangeline Pascual who performed “Disinter” by Melissa Roxas, a Fil-Am abducted in Tarlac in 2009.

 

TV Host Boy Abunda also participated through video as he read “Pagtindig” by Joi Barrios, accompanied by Jonathan Urbano’s violin.

 

Torture survivor Axel Pinpin, one of the Tagaytay 5 Farmers abducted in 2006, read his poem “Mahal Kong Orly” as a team of young artists performed live painting for the audience.

 

Actor Joel Saracho read Amado V. Hernandez’s “Panata sa Kalayaan,” and artist Raye Baquirin read Joi Barrios’s “Ang Pagiging Babae ay Pamumuhay sa Panahon ng Digma” as Lorelei Bulan did an interpretative dance.

 

Members of the Desaparecidos, an alliance of families and friends of victims of impunity, joined in the tributes as they gave a heartbreaking performance of Barrios’s “Litanya ng Nawawala.”

 

Dr. Edita Burgos, convenor of the Desaparecidos and mother of missing activist Jonas Burgos, thanked the crowd, saying, “Ang inyong pagsuporta ang siya na lang aming pwedeng paghugutan ng lakas. Kung wala kayo, mahihirapan kaming maghanap ng aming mga mahal sa buhay.”

 

Meanwhile, Cadapan’s mother Erlinda claimed justice: “Sana po sasamahan ninyo ako nang hindi lamang na mailabas natin si Sherlyn Cadapan kundi mapapanagot po ang lahat ng may sala. Papanagutin po natin sila sa kanilang mga kasalanan.” –KG, GMA News

 

"Imprint: Images of Impunity" will be on display at the Sining Kamalig Gallery in Gateway Mall until February 28, 2012.