Makati, NCR Metro Manila—Bellas Artes Projects (BAP) proudly presents Fairest of the Fair, a group exhibition with works by Pio Abad (Philippines/UK) and Frances Wadsworth Jones (UK), Analivia Cordeiro (Brazil), Köken Ergun (Turkey), and Jose Enrique Soriano (Philippines).
The exhibition looks back at widely circulated photographs of beauty pageants taking place at the annual Manila Carnival, held between 1908-1939, during the American colonial era. At times named Philippines Exposition, the carnival was a “world’s” fair that promoted commerce and industry through pavilions–displays of major American companies aiming to make business with the colony–and a contest of beauty queens, each representing regions and provinces of the Philippines. This event left a deep mark on the modern Filipino society emerging at the time, developing consumerism influenced by American models of enterprise and capitalism. In retrospect, the Queens of Carnival are early manifestations of a certain enduring Filipino culture of pageants, symptomatic of the continuous reproduction of class, gender, and racial inequalities which are addressed differently across contexts and mediums in the works included in the show.
Exhibiting for the very first time in the Philippines, after being broadly featured internationally, Köken Ergun’s Binibining Promised Land (2010) is an installation capturing the annual beauty pageant organised by Overseas Filipino Workers in Israel. Realised at a time before the widespread use of smartphones, and in the very first years of social media, the moving image in Ergun’s work manifests as a tool for visibility and empowerment for a minority whose struggles are almost invisible within Israel’s public sphere and the debates around rightful citizenship in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Pageants within the Filipino community are outlets for self-expression and escapism, as well as for patriotic pride, which are often felt more acutely in diasporic contexts.
Pio Abad and Frances Wadsworth Jones‘ The Treatment of 12,052 Cases of Tuberculosis Until Their Full Recovery (2019) is a 3D virtual render of a Cartier tiara previously owned by Imelda Marcos. Currently languished in the vaults of the Philippine Central Bank, the tiara forms part of the infamous ‘Hawaii Collection’; a group of jewels confiscated in 1986 by Interpol when the Marcoses landed in Honolulu after finding exile with support from the Reagan administration. The collection was repatriated to the Philippines as it was turned over to the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), the agency tasked with the liquidation of the Marcos assets, becoming a symbol of ideological disputes in Filipino politics.
The poignant black-and-white film photographs taken by Jose Enrique Soriano between 1991-1994 at the premises of the National Center for Mental Health in Mandaluyong, emphasizes a crowning ceremony of a beauty contest held by the patients and medical staff. These strong images convey how pageantry culture and its inherent fantasy of monarchy, manifests in the most marginal contexts of society.
Originally aired on Brazilian TV, Analivia Cordeiro’s M3X3 (1977) is a pioneering work using computer-generated choreography for a dance video piece performed by an all-female dance group. Her intervention in mass media was a critical response to the power relations between producers, camera, dance and spectatorship, at a time when dancers (mostly female) were often seen as backdrop. In the context of the exhibition, the abstract architecture on screen appears as a metaphor of social control, where it is up to the dancers’ interpretation to the computer’s composition what would enable subjectivity to take place within what appears as a virtual grid of rigid/normative behavioral conduct.
The collection of vintage of photographs of Queens of Carnival featured in “Fairest of the Fair” are generously loaned by the Mario Feir Filipiniana Library.
The opening reception will take place on Tuesday, May 7th at 7pm at BAP Outpost, 2/F The Alley at Karrivin 2316 Chino Roces Avenue, Makati. More information on their facebook event page.
For inquiries and more information, please contact press@bellasartesprojects.org or (02) 817-2205.
