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The
Chinese diaspora is a phenomenon that has consistently
made a mark on the lives of many peoples and societies,
especially now that China is dynamically asserting
itself in the family of nations as a new world power.
Indeed, their diaspora from the Middle Kingdom is not
just the movement of the last decades; it has been
taking place for centuries throughout the various
Chinese dynasties, such as the Tang (618-906), Sung
(960-1279), Yuan 1279-1398), Ming (1368-1644), Ching
(1644-1911) and the later People’s Republic of China
(1949). The southward movement of Chinese toward
Southeast Asia and beyond has taken place for a number of reasons,
the most obvious being the constant desire to discover
what the bigger world has to offer and the search for
economic opportunity. Mass migrations also occurred as a
result of anxieties and fears due to upheavals in
political power, as in the historical seizure of the
imperial throne by outsiders such as the Mongols (the
Ming Dynasty) and the Manchus (the Ching Dynasty).
Today,
China is the center of a powerful trade nexus between
China
and the many countries of the world which would like to
participate in the new economic power play.
In the
light of rapidly shifting economic centers, there have
recently been a number of art exhibits, such as that of
the Yuchengco Museum, revolving around China or the
Chinese diaspora, with art in this context made to
function as a gracious liaison to the harder realities
of global capitalism. The latest is the series of
exhibitions at the Ayala Museum on the theme “Chinese
Diaspora: Art Streams from the Mainland.” This series,
in fact, consists of six individually curated shows
which are “to celebrate the extraordinary achievements
of syncretic Chinese cultures in Southeast
Asia—achievements that significantly contribute to the
formation and imaging of nation in the present-day
countries of
Singapore
and the Philippines, paying homage to their ultimate
sources—the ancient civilizations of China.”
First,
this exhibit does not consist of traditional or modern
art from mainland China, but instead highlights the
syncretic cultural achievements which stem from
interrelationships between Chinese culture and its
different Southeast Asian or global contexts. Secondly,
these examples of art and culture significantly
contribute to the formation and imagining of nation in
such countries as Singapore and the Philippines. For the
Philippines, it would seem that the most influential
aspects of Chinese influence lie in places where it has
been gradually and naturally assimilated into the
Filipino life and consciousness, as in the provinces
where the masses of Filipino-Chinese live more
unobtrusively, unlike in the cities where they may
reside in wealthy enclaves or in Chinatown, which
maintains a more exclusive ethnic character. Likewise,
Singaporean and Malaysian societies have a different
cultural and political combination with respect to the
Chinese and the other groups, including the Indian,
which are factored differently in the Philippines.
A
question is how central is the Chinese element in the
formation of the Filipino national consciousness and
identity, and it seems that in the coming future, like
it or not, the matter of power relations may enter more
and more into the picture. At this time, it now becomes
positively stated that Filipinos, along with
Singaporeans, must pay homage to their “ultimate
sources—the ancient civilizations of
China.”
Indeed, it is true that in the distant millennium the
Austronesians, who came from South China peopled
Southeast Asia to as far as Easter Island, bringing with
them their chickens, their bamboo craft and earthenware
vessels. And after them came wave upon wave of Chinese
migrations. There are a great number of Chinese in the
Philippines and also Filipino-Chinese, or Chinoys, who
still know relatives and grandparents from the Chinese
mainland and who may still speak the language or a
smattering of it. But for many ordinary Filipinos,
factoring in the Chinese element into their identities
or into the national identity as a whole is like opening
a new window to one’s consciousness, like a differently
colored space with its own cosmologies and myths, its
own ways of seeing. Such a process, of course, becomes a
highly relative one depending on one’s personal and
social roots. On the whole and in the present day, one
recognizes its presence and influence on Philippine
society marked by avid consumerism and the unfortunate
lack of parks.
Now, the
six series at the
Ayala Museum
are The Peranakan Legacy, a loan exhibition from
the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore; Tsinoy:
Mestizo Art of Colonial Times; Damian Domingo:
The First Great Filipino Painter; Chinese
Tradeware from the Roberto T. Villanueva Collection;
China Gaze and Evidence Bags. The first, The
Peranakan Legacy, refers to the syncretic culture
that developed in the trading posts of Malacca, Penang
and Singapore. From the 15th century, the Malay Straits
between
Malaysia
and Singapore was a lively zone of trade where Chinese
traders intermarried with Malay women. The material
culture which arose from these unions consisted of
jewelry, beaded slippers, gold and silver ornaments,
ceramics, garments, textiles and furniture, not to
forget a special cuisine and the music, manners and
mores of their communities. Part of this exhibit is a
decorative hanging for a wedding bed, a fish figure made
of silver crafted in a distinct style.
The
Tsinoy exhibit, curated by Ambeth Ocampo, consists of
mainly of santos in ivory and hardwood, as well as
jewelry and furniture which have been mainly regarded as
19th century Philippine colonial art. Now, this present
exhibit wants to show that there was a little-recognized
subset within colonial art which consisted of the
productions of Chinese, originally, and—later—Tsinoy
artisans who inherited the arts and crafts. One should
not miss seeing the perfect Head of a Woman done
in solid ivory in the Paulino and Hetty Que Collection.
The show
Damian Domingo: The First Great Filipino Painter,
curated by Lisa Ongpin-Periquet, Luciano Santiago and
Deanna Ongpin-Recto, presents previously unviewed works
by the artist from the Jaime V. Ongpin Collection.
Domingo’s work Catedra de San Pedro en Roma, with the
exquisite ornamentation of the altar, is done not on
canvas or wood but on thin copper sheet, which was a
practice of artists in the early 19th century.
Chinese
Tradeware
from the Roberto T. Villanueva Collection features an 18
cm. Urn with Five Spouts made of celadon from the
12th-13th century. The selection spans a millennium of
pottery from the cities of Southern China along the
profitable trade routes.
There
are two more exhibits: China Gaze by Valeria
Cavestany presents light boxes, acrylic portraits, and
works on paper dealing with Chinese themes; and
Evidence Bags by Claudine Sia, which is an
installation of photographs enclosed in thin paper and
mounted on walls, back to back, all of them evoking
memory and history.
These
exhibits in a series of six organized by the Ayala
Museum give us new insights into the Chinese-Filipino
relationship in
Southeast Asia. This theme occurs not only in the region but in the
entire world as well, because of the remarkable dynamism
of the Chinese people in numerous fields. |
