Gilda Cordero-Fernando, through her art, has always made a strong case for the legitimacy of our own culture against the canon of other time-tested narratives. Beyond adaptation or mere retelling, the stories she portrays are a re- contextualization of the hieroglyphics of legends and myths into the vernacular of her own memory, history, and social milieu. Beginning with the title of her latest show in Silverlens Gallery, Same Difference: Ganon pa din ang Diperensya, it demonstrates the kind of transformation one’s culture can impose on borrowed language—a translation marked by the borrower’s sensibility, the shift towards the domestication of a concept. It is a staple device for Filipino humor, this verbal subtitling for comedic effect, reminiscent of the different generations of comic duos who have entertained audiences by processing oblique translations into punch lines.
It is the same kind of process that can be found in Gilda Cordero Fernando’s artworks, which are oblique translations of certain texts filtered in three stages: from western archetypes, to the Filipino folklore, down to its punch line—which is pop culture. Her themes are universal—the myths of creation, mother and child, romance and apparitions, which achieve localization through her deep understanding of inherent Filipino traits—wit, humor, grace, and gaiety—and are further reconstructed through personal memory and firsthand observations of the other modern traits—gossip, envy, apathy, and naiveté. It is Mother Nature addressed in mother tongue portrayed by the Fashionista Mom.
In the first series of paintings, The Aliens are Coming, she depicts different female symbols from different tableaus: the social (the Senora), the fictional (Darna), and the supernatural (Mebuyan, goddess of the Underworld). She puts them against the presence of an uncategorized being, the aliens, who are sexless, ambiguous, and sporting highly speculative existences. Their being is measured against the persona of these female archetypes who lie unfazed, indifferent, or totally naïve from any threat they might impose. In the end, the series works out as a narration of the female characters’ victory against their invaders, who in their hands have reached a violent and whimsical end—cut into pieces and skewered into sticks for roasting. It is easy to sense the hilarity in the storyline but the juxtaposition of archetypal codes, alien visions, and a banal climax make up for a new brand of mythology, a modern-day fable rendered through painting and drawing by a present-day tribe, whom in itself is faced by the contradictions and absurdity of meaning in everyday life.
In the series dedicated to the universal concept of Mother and Child, Gilda Cordero Fernando presents a succession of paintings that revolve around the theme, riddled by the nuances of her own arbitrary variations on the given subject, which has become a demonstration of how much the visual image is dependent on the written text or on a single concept. These images are elaborations of that single phrase—mother and child—and as much as the poet needs to understand that concept through different lines of thoughts, the artist/painter tries to understand it through different images composed of different colors, symbols, objects, and brushstrokes. There is the Mother and Child Against the Wind, Mother and Son on Plastic Chair, Sleepless Mom with Child, Madonna of the Papaya, The Fashionista Mom, and a few more others in varying mise-en-scene and compositions.
-Cocoy Lumbao
-Silverlens Galleries
Image: © Gilda Cordero-Fernando
Courtesy of the artist and Silverlens Galleries
