Philippine Consulate General hosts new art exhibition

There is a new art exhibition at the Philippine Consulate General in Al Qusais, Dubai.

Under the “Museo sa Konsulado,” this is the “Kata I and Kata II,” an immersion of the public into the visual arts-cum-contemplative melody by a mother and son.

It rocks and lullabies them to that time and space of how languages and peoples are interknitted altogether. Even as the vast deep, the gargantuan concrete jungles and the jagged summits mean separation and God-willing, reunion.

The mother is Higher Colleges of Technology in Sharjah faculty member Susan Villanueva-De Guzman, recognised by public and private institutions in the UAE and overseas for her contributions in her advocacies through education.

She has been globally recognised for her expanding portfolios of graphic designs and oil-watercolour-acrylic paintings and murals.

Her son, whom she had requested “to arrange” the contemplative melody, is Canada-based Patrick Zyrille, “a storyteller, an instructional designer, an artist, and an animator.”

In his welcome address at the Friday inauguration of the “Kata I and Kata II” – the “third public exhibition” of the “inseparable” murals – both at 1.9X2.4 metres metallic/acrylic and foil leaf, Consul General Marford Angeles tackled a bit the semantics of “kata.”

He re-emphasised that among other mandates, the consular mission serves as the “platform and amplifier” for the Filipinos’ “talent, creativity and resiliency.” The reason for the Museo sa Konsulado,” of which Villanueva-De Guzman is the seventh featured UAE-based artist.

Especially so that the initiative is anchored as well on five of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – unbiased quality education (4), decent work and economic growth (8), reduced inequalities (10), sustainable cities and communities (11), and global partnerships for growth (17) – which all governments are striving to succeed in, through their own citizens and through bilateral and multilateral collaborations. Which points to the lifeblood of the “Kata I and Kata II,” originally displayed at the main wall of the award-winning Mangrove Café of the Philippine Pavilion during the “Expo2020 Dubai” – whose “Bangkota” identification embodies the story of the adventurous Filipino people.

They who have learnt to tenaciously move up through the ripples and billows of bounty and poverty, wherever their Bathala/Allah/God plants them individually and collectively. Interestingly, August, in the Philippines is the “Buwan ng Wika,” as Spanish-Filipino Commonwealth President Manuel L. Quezon (August 19, 1898-August 1, 1944) had determined that colonised Filipinos, evolving as a nation and as a people, must have their own national language.

Good to know that “kata is an “old Tagalog word that means ‘you and I or we,” according to Villanueva-De Guzman who had thought of titling her “inseparable ‘Kata I and Kata II’” as such even before she started painting it “upside-down.”

Villanueva-De Guzman, who, whenever the muse strikes, principally does extensive research and mind mapping “because I want that every visual expression of mine is purposeful and leaves a message.”

That inquisitiveness on “kata” let this reporter moreover learn that, like “bangkota,” it belongs to the Southern Tagalog Region in Southern Luzon. However, that among the 182 documented Philippine languages, basically Astro-Polynesian in nature, “kata,” according to the Austronesian Languages Page in Facebook contributor, Loida Lumawen, originates in the town of Baler, the birthplace of President Quezon and the capital of Aurora province in Southern Luzon.

Lumawen wrote: “Words like kata live there, not as decorations or throwbacks, but as part of daily life in Baler and still alive. I’ve heard it, and I’ve felt it.” Lumawen illustrated the “kata” in use: Kata na – Let’s go. Magwalis kata – Let’s sweep together. Maganda kata – We are both beautiful. Mahal kata – I love you (the contextual meaning is We are us because of our closeness). On Friday, Villanueva-De Guzman acknowledged the freedom architect Royal Pineda, the man-behind-the-Bangkota ideation, architect Royal Pineda, had given her. Thus, “Kata I and Kata II.” Two people approached her for the individual purchases. She did not budge: “These, we cannot separate because it is one and it is the single soul that mirrors the journey of our nation and our people, who, in ways, thrive wherever we are planted. We are united with shared hardships. But we sustain on. We are together. Like corals, we reconstruct out of brokenness and transform distance into proximity.”