Encountering the Sacred with Duddley Diaz
Tuscany-based Filipino sculptor Duddley Diaz brings to Manila his latest works in an exhibition entitled Epifanie: Manifestations of the Sacred on 7 February at Galleria Duemila. The show features recent sculptures of deities and goddesses produced in the artist's atelier in Italy.
Epifanie presents Diaz's new collection of relief and round sculptures of goddesses, ranging from life-size works to smaller pieces set in jewelry. Working in traditional media such as wood, ebony, ox bone, and bronze, the sculptures are modelled through the artist's distinct carving technique: chipped to reveal irregularly contoured figures beneath. The textures testify to the way Diaz deviates from the traditional ways in which icons and statues are produced—painstakingly rounded, polished, and painted over with several layers—and instead imbues them with forms more elemental and essential. The artist's vivid palette likewise add to the primal power of the works: pristine primary colors stain the surface while a gilded veneer covers surfaces in darker hues. Also exquisite are the smaller sculptures produced as jewelry pieces.
To view Diaz's works is to encounter the sacred in a new light: traditional deities are represented, while icons of foreign provenance are appropriated and probed for parallelisms with Philippine culture. This is evident in the way the artist draws on a diverse range of iconographies for his images: from the Celtic goddess Epona and Green goddess Demeter to pre-colonial Filipino images, such as references to the manunggul jar and images of Haliya and Meybuyan, from images of owls and lizards and references to the Virgin Mary, as the works Theotokos (Mother of God) 1 and 2 indicate. Diaz also makes extensive use of religious symbolism in his choice of material, color, and iconography. Wood, for instance, is a material is rich in historical reference to both Christianity and animist beliefs.
In Epifanie, Diaz presents for the first time in the Philippines his representations of Epona: a goddess astride a horse, the cult worship of whom penetrated the Roman pantheon of deities. The artist started to take an interest in the iconography of Epona's images around three years ago during a trip to the United Kingdom, and after encountering more of the subject in Rome and Venice. Diaz draws comparisons between Epona and later representations of Christ, noting the iconographic shift from pagan to Christian in a span of centuries.
The artist's interest in the subject of goddesses indicates his preference for representing the maternal as powerful, and his implied deviance from traditional images of a male-centric conceptions of God. While most of his works are representations of female deities, other works such as the Awakening of a Young God (depicting a kouros, a form of Greek archaic sculpture) are rendered in androgynous, almost feminine features.
Duddley Diaz studied at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts and at the Schools of Painting and Sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy. He was the recipient of a Freeman Full Fellowship Grant at Vermont Studio Center in the United States in 1998. Metrobank Foundation gave him the Grand Prize for Sculpture Achievement Award in 2005. As part of the Centennial celebration of the University of the Philippines last year, he was given the International Achievement Award by the Alumni Association.
The exhibit opens at 4 pm with performances by tenor Francisco Aseniero Jr., who studied Voice under Prof. Aurelio Estanislao of the University of the Philippines, Prof. Hana Ludwig of Hochschuele Mozartueum in Salzburg, Austria, and John Lester of the United States; pianist John Florencio, a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music under Peggy Salkind; and accomplished singer and actress Stephanie Reese.
