The Cordillera artists are probably the most high-profile of our regional artists. One thinks of Bencab, Kidlat Tahimik, Santiago Bose, John Frank Sabado, the late Roberto Villanueva.

This is so not just because they have a topography and culture conducive to art-making, or because of the high quality of their art, but also because they regularly hold an art festival, and they are in constant interaction with the Manila art scene, which one can hardly say of artists from other regions of the country.

They also seem to be the most unified, the recent drifting apart of the Baguio Arts Guild notwithstanding. One tends to group them together as Baguio artists, when, in fact, many are from other parts of the Cordillera. Bencab, for example, is based in Tam-awan Village, while Kidlat Tahimik is in Hapao.

Just the same, they are often thought of as a group such a the recent show in Hiraya.

In the wake of that exhibit comes a dazzling display of 13 mixed-media pieces on neolite by Baguio native Leonard Aguinaldo. The show, "Creative Isolation," is ongoing until July 31 in Hiraya Gallery, 530 United Nations Ave., Ermita, Manila (between Bocobo and Mabini Streets, near Holiday Inn).

Carved, cut or incised on 90.5 cm x 90.5 cm rubber sheets. then painted with oil or acrylic and some embellished with fragments of mirror, are images of such splendid hues and breathtaking precision the viewer is forced into a meditative state. The precision of the etching method, the sharpness or subtlety of coloration, the unwavering symmetry, and especially the miniaturism of motifs and details, are such that one can describe the painstaking technique as anal-retentive.

Occult image

This is the mandala, and the way Aguinaldo has filled it with the brightest hues and the most elaborate designs makes it look like a piece of tapestry. Its concentric configuration of geometric shapes and symbolic forms, radial, curvilinear, wave and flame patterns, motifs of birds, lizards, snakes, dogs, idols, trees, vines, flowers, mountain range, foliage, records and sings the land and its people.

In many of the pieces, Aguinaldo has transformed the mandala from an object of spirituality into a vehicle for social commentary. In some, he even transcends the human experience from the personal to the universal, The Policeman Who Ran over My White Dog shows a slender white dog rampant in the center surrounded by circles within circles of red, blue, with the outmost a golden sunburst. This would seem like an occult image, as in dog worship, until closer inspection reveals the social commentary behind. On the blue borders are etched vignettes of street and market scenes with the policeman as dominant motif.

Dog's Life in Man's Life consists of multicolor squares with vignettes and motif of dogs running, rearing, copulating. The whole conveys a quiet lament over the death of the family dog and a biting comment on the abuses of policemen, guzzlers and dog-eaters. An irreverent touch is the reworking of the Last Supper into a drinking spree with the apportioned carcass of a dog as pulutan.

Iconic image

Ninuno sa Bintana ni Bill shows an iconic image against a backdrop of netting, from an old photograph of a group of Igorots in native dresses, G-strings, americana and berets. On the artwork the artist has etched this information: "Location: Atok, Benguet. Palasay and His Family. 1908. Condition: Good. Picture Subject: Indigenous Cultures." What is meant to be a family portrait has been transformed into a specimen file, a firing-squad shot, a case study of guinea pigs.

This is made poignant by the pallor of the group portrait amid colorful patterns. The commentary is made more scathing by peripheral images of a man trapped inside an hourglass, a bulol entangled by flame-red vines with a balloon crying "Help," a bearded American in turn-of-the-century uniform, probably the governor-general.

In the other pieces, Aguinaldo memorializes death (Bud of Good Karma), celebrates fertility (In Heat), yearns for the spiritual (Cut Me a Prayer). In some, he integrates personal experiences, such as his trip to France as Philippine representative to an international art exhibition ("Walking in a Postcard"), or his indebtedness to the cellphone and the Internet (Message Sent).

But always, there is his spiritual roots in the Cordillera culrare, as illustrated by Dear God, Make Me an Igorot and the biggest of the pieces (double the size of the others), "Nature My Culture.”

These artworks can be better appreciated without those titles, though. The imagery is clear enough, the lavish colors (tangerine, lilac, yellow, acid-green, ultramarine, flame-red, gold, violet, fuchsia) fill the eyes, and the elaborate patterns have a psychic pull. They don’t need to be explained away by extraneous, often blunt titles.

In the mandala’s schematized representation of the cosmos is always contained the image of deity or attributes of deity. Here in Aguinaldo’s extraordinary artworks, aspects of the divine are represented by Nature and the bulol, the granary god of the Cordillera folk. Nothing can be more universal than that.