"In order to read the destiny of a people,

it is necessary to open the book of its past..."

-Jose Rizal, The Philippines: A Century Hence

Hiraya Gallery goes into an introspective mood midyear with its upcoming series entitled Saan Ka Nanggaling, Saan Ka Darating , successively featuring the country's top printmakers: Imelda Cajipe-Endaya, Ofelia Gelvezon-Tequi and Fil Delacruz.

Taking its cue from the visions of our national hero, Jose Rizal, in his long essay, "The Philippines: A Century Hence," Hiraya offers its patrons and visitors a varied but provocative look-and-see into the Filipinos' responses to the events of the 20th century Philippines.

Outcries: Fil Delacruz

The idyllic beauty which circles the innocent lives of our ethnic tribes is caught with painful nostalgia and angst in the mezzotints of Fil Delacruz who spent off-and-on visits for three years to the Manobos of Kalamansig, Sultan Kudarat.

Each print is emotionally laden with the juxtaposition of women caught in flight with their bundle of infants in their arms against the massive darkness that is onrushing behind their heels. Even when they lapse to their ordinary tasks, the dreams of plants and harvest fill their minds with obsessive power as precious possessions.

Delacruz uses a painstaking process called “mezzotint” in order to coax out images from a metal surface by using burnishers, a scraper, etching needle, hard steel and printing press. His mode of printing, a style from the 17th century, is a metaphor for the violent events which he is immortalizing: the landgrabbing and illegal logging on the tribal hereditary lands and the dislocation being experienced by the childlike tribes of the mountains. Where darkness is huge in his frame, he etches dramatically the nightmarish senses which the Filipinos felt during the colonial eras and in the power-hungry campaigns by the fortune hunters of today.