AT THE OUTSET, the works of Leonard Aguinaldo properly belong to the ethnic and indigenous art genre, from which the Baguio-born and - bred painter has derived the wellspring of his rich and endearing iconography.

 In his first solo show at the Hiraya, the 33-year-old Aguinaldo has put together 15 fairly large paintings on homemade paper, with a mix of water-based media and pen-and-ink, under the title Chadjang and Other Rites, to reconfigure the traditional healer’s role in Cordillera culture in ways all at once refreshing, disarming and entrancing.

With their allusion to the mumbaki of the Ifugao, the mambunong of the Mountain Province, and the shaman of indigenous Western society, the works depict the rites and rituals of healing and religious offering, evoking, as it were, the spiritual beliefs and the ways of life of the Cordillera folk in Northern Philippines. Using the storytelling mode to probe the rich lore of their healing arts, Aguinaldo combines the manifold imagery of East and West, the traditional and the contemporary, the mystical as well as the sensual, in his bold attempt to create a colorful tapestry of signs, symbols and sentiments.

Signature piece

In the signature piece, Chadjang Rites, the artist employs his trademark multi-pictorial approach to storytelling (already discernible in the previous groups shows of the Tam-awan Village artists nurtured by their guru, the Baguio-based Bencab), wherein his legendary warrior, Wigan, is shown as being befriended by the proverbial monkey while searching for the healing potion. The image of the monkey--a regular staple of local folklore--is admittedly more than just decorative here, as it plays an integral part in the unfolding yarn.

The core of Aguinaldo’s creative interplay of iconographic images finds its apotheosis in Baltong Song, where the mumbaki is reverentially portrayed as the central protagonist and, with his healing powers, must make, in behalf of the petitioner, the sacrificial offering to the gods harvest of the land, a slaughtered beast such as pig or chickens, with the complementary betel nuts to boot, as the harbingers of continued health, prosperity and blessings of the good life.

Cordillera

Living up to the exhibit title, Aguinaldo shows time-tested rituals of the Cordillera folk. In Dance of Appeasement, he offers a diptych of imagery, depicting the ways by which the local folk perform a ritual of dance under a canopied tree while directly below it stands the image of a shaman in black hood, framed by a halo amid a bare landscape just dotted with trees.

The bulol, vaunted guardian of the rice fields and the folks’ dwelling place, and widely believed to ward off evil spirits, is the main subject of Baki (abridged from mumbaki), where their images are serially depicted, like the religious statues that decorate Church altars and retablos.

In many of his works, the artist imaginatively incorporates the text of traditional chants, like mantras to be recited over and over, by having written these passages on parts of the parchment-like medium. The device of reconstructing old documents--such as codes, penmanship and inscriptions--has imbued Aguinaldo’s storytelling approach with a sense of documented remembrance in the archive of his people’s memory.

What finally emerges in the works is the strongest virtue of Aguinaldo’s art: his ebullient sense of color--predominantly in the spectrum of warm, primary palette--that perfectly complements and rounds up the primacy of his folk, child-like imagination.

If this first show is to become a gauge of Aguinaldo’s manifold gifts unfolding, then we can dare say that the art of Leonard Aguinaldo will occupy its rightful place in contemporary art.