The sense of ethnic identity runs deep among many artists, especially those of the Cordillera in the North. Among the latest artists to take up this theme is Leonardo Aguinaldo, who held a recent individual show at the Hiraya Gallery. What strikes one about his works is the intensity and wholeness with which he deals with the theme. He draws out its different aspects in images of ancestors, social situations and cultural symbols.

Born in Baguio City in 1967, Aguinaldo has lived in the bosom of the Baguio highlands with its unique interaction of nature and culture. It is an atmosphere that is so easily evoked because it is highly distinctive: the mountains heights, the fresh aroma of pines, the morning fog and cold. But Baguio City itself is a passage between two cultures: on one hand, the urban migrants from the neighboring Ilocos provinces and the lowlands; on the other, the indigenous ethnic populations collectively called Igorots and including the Ifugao, Bontoc, Kalingan, Kankanay, etc. In the long years of cohabitation, a merging of identities may have taken place-but only up to a point. Some Baguio artists may feel trapped and incomplete in this hybrid, transitional zone and may deeply wish to be fully integrated with the indigenous groups. The filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik, for instance, wants to settle in more remote areas away from the city in search of ethnic authenticity. Now, the title of one of Aguinaldo's paintings is a personal cry: Dear God, Please Make Me an Igorot!. The god he invokes might as well be Kabunian rather than the Christian god. For a long time, the term "Igorot" was overlaid with colonial prejudice, but it has been recuperated and its negative connotations shaken off, partly through the efforts of the scholar William Henry Scott, who pointed out that Igorot means "people of the mountains," from I, meaning "inhabitant of"; and gorot, meaning "height" as in the Pilipino word gulod.

But before drawing out the meanings of his work, it is first necessary to remark on his medium and formal aspects. His works are rubbercut paintings in standard square sizes of 90.5 x 90.5. The firm and supple texture of the rubber medium lends itself well to his technique of working in carving tools with acrylic, oil and printer's ink, in a demanding process which produces an evenly toned image with fine linear details that can only be achieved by a light and sure touch. The artist has likewise introduced the innovation of cutouts often in the shape and size of hands with the resulting space filled in with mirrors. In many of the works, a circular mandala occupies the center of the square with its sides bordered with organic motifs in linear repetition, calling to mind illuminated manuscripts or Persian carpets and tapestries. In these paintings, the artist put to good use his training in architectural drafting at the Baguio Colleges Foundation, which developed artistic confidence and discipline in his meticulous kind of artmaking.

One of the most striking works in the ethnic theme is Ninuno sa Bintana ni Bill. The central image here was appropriated from a photograph in Dean Worcester's book Imperial Imagings, which contains early 20th-century pictures of Cordillera peoples constituting a catalogue of colonial subjects. This particular photograph was of special value because his wife recognized the group as her ancestors belonging to the Palasay family of the Atok district in Benguet. This photographic image was transposed into a rubbercut painting incised in gray tones conveying a somber mood and an elegiac feeling for kin who lived in a distant time, their ethnicity distinguishable by their traditional costumes. The distinctive marks of their traditional culture and signs of common identity become a bridge between generations, ensuring an unbroken continuity and emotional bond. Above the central image is a friezelike motif of woven curtains beyond which lurk faces, spirit-presence, that are trapped in time and space and crying to be free. Trapped by poverty and prejudice, they are impeded from realizing their full human potential. Along the lower border on both sides are glass cutouts of the artist's open hands which seem to reach out to and encompass the ancestral images as though seeking to free them from captivity. At the same time, the aspiration for completeness, for full assimilation into the Igorot identity, always comes short of realization-the hands do not enter the privileged zone of the central image.

Past and present interweave in the work: the artist's hand, living and mobile, is of the present and the two-dimensional photograph is of the past. The device of the mirror, in fact, signifies a release from the two-dimensional/three-dimensional binary. With an intriguing ambiguity, it is neither quite two-dimensional because it has spatial depth; nor three-dimensional because it retains a flat surface. At the same time, as mirror and looking-glass, it gives a self-reflecting image and is thus a signifier of identity. Also part of the interaction of past and present are the small computer icons of command that are woven into the curtain motif; they function as communication signs which at once imply connection and dislocation in the ironic sense of the technological gap. At the same time, they constitute decorative elements in a cultural situation in which they are disrupted from operational use.

The mandala paintings are stunning in their richness of imagery and concentrated force. In the Asian pictorial traditions associated with religious belief, mandalas are pieces for meditation in which the viewer is drawn inward into the central sacred space where he is freed from the baggages of the world. In Dear God, Please Make Me an Igorot!, the center is a holy ground, the Igorot dap-ay where the community's concerns and struggles are brought out for collective discussion. All around the circumscribed central space are numerous bulol figures, each in its own space, representing the spirits of the ancestors. In the space between the circle and the bordering square is a garden of flowering vines and birds, the details clearly and finely articulated with fresh colors in an overall linear pattern. Two worshippers of the present day kneel in the lower corners, thus completing the religious meaning of the work. The image of nature's beauty also occurs in Eyes in My Karma, where the central image is the all-seeing eye. Surrounding it is a garden of flowers and birds in a traditional Asian style where meandering curvilinear lines do not overlap but form a continuous series. The artist's sense of color is sensitive and sophisticated in their unusual harmonies.

A vivid painting which come out of a recent incident is Dog's Life in a Man's Life, which shows a range of emotional responses, anger, sorrow, humor, at the death of the artist's pet dog as a result of a hit-and-run accident for which the chief policeman was responsible. The principal image is that of corrupt policeman and officials carousing over drink and dog meat while the towns-people continue to support them, to the artist's consternation. Along the four sides of the work are images of spunky canines. In one frame, a dog is cut up and singed as pulutan for the feast. In the opposite frame, a group of dogs lustily feeds on a man in revenge against the brutal policeman and his cohorts.

Everywhere he goes, Leonard Aguinaldo brings his native air and natural gardens, as well as his causes and concerns, with him. When he was chosen as Philippine representative to an outdoor show Le Vent des Forets (Forest Winds) in Lahaymeix in France in June 2001, he made a large installation-structure of breathing spaces out of twigs, branches and stones. The French press quoted him as saying: "One does not negotiate with the merchants of art, and in the process one takes a militant stand. In our country, urbanization has severely damaged our natural environment. The least that one can do is to pay homage to the victims."