Infanta, Armalite
Why for Philippine politics, happiness is a warm gun

Liv Romualdez-Vinluan is not one to live in her thought balloon. Absconding the seduction of autobiography, the artist makes sure that her every work is a visceral response to her environment (in her case, the postcolonial Philippines of the 21st century) that impinges against, disrupts, and violently subsumes her sense of reality/morality. For her, the artist should be in a position to converse, react and throw back an argument which may assume the shape of art-a witness alert to the social and political transactions people negotiate every single waking day of their lives.

“Infanta, Armalite,” more than anything, is an affirmation to this belief. Transpiring a little over a week after the Philippine election, the exhibit drains all the color and subterfuges of this event and offers powerful images on how, through the years, it has become an otherworldy circus of weird characters and absurd acts will fully violating the soaring themes of this democratic institution. She is helped, nonetheless, by actual absurdities: before speaking about their platforms, politicians are “required” to do a song and dance routine; rich politicians can run for a party-list office, representing security guards and tricycle drivers; a political dynasty feels compelled to protect itself with a small army.

For Vinluan, politics is a societal perversion of the lowest order, hence “hybrid” figures claim the stage of her paintings (one creature has the recombinant features of a lion and a tiger, alluding to an attempt by a politician to genetically mix the two in an offspring) as well as shadows slithering territorially across walls and menacing presences taking a peek from the corners of the canvas. What sustains this perversion is violence and walls in the paintings are metaphorical traps that disabuse any notion of an escape. A dead body, in one painting, is insinuated, the sound of the piercing bullet rendered into a typographical shout across a wall.

Certainly, the artist’s themes are serious and high-minded but they don’t have the crushing burden of an agitprop or even a commentary. For the artist is never declarative of her sentiments; the juxtaposition of her works in the room, their cohesive narrative, and their singular impact on the viewer generate the tense energy she wants us to feel, all in the absence of polemics and appeal to our sympathy. The self-evident nature of her works is enough to jolt us out of our complacency and see for ourselves the unornamented truths that are a source of power for some and suffering for others.

Without ever departing from her sense of panic and urgency, Vinluan has created a searing portrait of Philippine politics, and it’s not pretty.
by Carlomar Arcangel Daoana