UAE | General
Jeepney as art form for artist couple
- From Our Bureau Chief
- Published: 00:00 May 25, 2003
Filipino artist Alfredo Juan Aquilizan, 41, and his wife, Maria Isabel Gaudinez, 39, will exhibit the jeepney as an art object at the Venice military hardware museum in Venice on June 12.
In preparation for the show, last February they paid out P300,000 ($5,769.23) and asked Lem Jay Motors in southern suburban Cavite to make a jeepney based on their specifications.
"We made a real vehicle for the exhibit, not just a three dimensional representation of the jeepney, as an art form," said the couple.
The origin of the Philippine jeepney is the military vehicle used by American soldiers when they conquered the country at the end of a 300-year-old Spanish rule in 1898.
For several decades, Filipinos passionately embraced the vintage vehicle as their very own and made several versions of it.
There is the so-called owner-type jeepney for family use, which looks like a compact four-wheel drive. It is usually made of stainless steel.
There is a public utility type, made of galvanised sheet, with an elongated back portion to accommodate about 20 passengers.
Earlier, commuters, tourists, sociologists and historians were always struck by the jeepney's appearance - with its gaudy and colourful art work, a dozen stickers, dozens of horses on top of the hood and loud music.
"We did research on the evolution of the military vehicles that were made by Ford, Willys, and Chrysler, which reached the Philippines at the turn of the century. For the show in Venice, we tried to copy the original U.S. military jeep. We came out with a form that is still like a military jeep, but we used stainless steel for its body," explained Aquilizan.
Why? Because all Filipino jeepney owners now prefer stainless steel over any other material for their home-made vehicles. They have given up the over decorated jeepney of past years.
"The jeepney has enhanced the Philippine culture," Aquilizan noted, regardless of criticism that many Filipinos have fallen short of identifying what is their very own because of their fixation with the jeepney which, ironically, came from their former colonial masters. "It is now our own. Identity is something you create out of things around you," argued Aquilizan.
For several decades, many Filipino artists, in search of an identity, have placed the jeepney on a pedestal, making it a source of inspiration and dialogue for what is Filipino.
In the 1980s, artist Rock Drilon painted jeepneys on canvas as a sociological statement. In the late 1980s, Jose Tence Ruiz dramatised the jeepney as a socially conscious three-dimensional sculptural work.
Now the Aquilizans have elevated the real jeepney as a worthy art exhibit.
They are saying that the jeepney has a unique spirit of its own because of the way the Filipinos have metamorphosed it, by giving it a utilitarian value for the masses and using it as a flexible canvas of Filipino art work.
"I work with things that are found in the community. I work with a community. For Filipinos, the community is a good source of materials," he said, adding that exotic forms are often romanticised by elitist art consumers.
In 2002, for 20 days, he managed to collect 3,000 used blankets from a community in Busan, South Korea. He mounted the colourful blankets on the walls of a room 12 feet high and 30 feet long room at the Busan Metropolitan Museum.
Hidden at the back of the blankets were speakers, which narrated the dreams of the owners of the blankets.
"It's our strategy to use materials that people can relate to, so that they understand art as a part of their life," said Aquilizan.
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