Currently ongoing at second floor of the Philippine National Museum is the Hocus exhibit—26 paintings by Guy Custodio in collaboration historian Saul Hofilena Jr as curated by Gemma Cruz-Araneta. The Hocus exhibit will run until October 29, 2017.
The paintings in the exhibit are the artworks which Saul Hofilena Jr, a lawyer and a historian and Guy Custodio , a conservator of the church’s treasures, made during the period of almost 4 years. In their collaboration, their purpose was to meld in oil, wood and woven cloth out nation’s history. When they are asked to identify who the real artist in these works , they refer to a trinity, Hofilena, Custodio, and that little icon they call the anghel de cuyacuy whose given name is Hocus.
The majority of the paintings deal with the Patronato Real or the Royal Patronage. The Royal Patronage was an arrangement between the Spanish monarchy who accepted from the Holy See the responsibility of maintaining and propagating thr Catholic faith. In exchange , the missionaries of the faith defended the acts of the sovereign and impliedly recognized that the Spanish monarch possessed just the title to the colonies.
They ask the viewer of the paintings to look at and to read the paintings like miniature books because that is what they are, vignettes of the country’s history presented in allegory. The Cartas Phillipensis is history disguised as tarot and the paintings are visual records of our country’s past.
