Catch the first leg of my Bai Nu Galang (Women of the Brass) one-man exhibit on 16 Nov – 12 Dec 2018 at Calungsod-San Vitores Jesuit-Lay Collaboration Center, Level 11 of the Community Center of the First Companions, Ateneo de Davao University Jacinto Campus.
“In Bai Nu Galang, Leonardo Cariño captures the domestic life of Maguindanaon women (from cooking, weaving, to teaching children read the Qur’an), with each painting punctuated by a brass ware that symbolizes a people’s cultural pride and ancestry. Using a conflagration of vibrant colors, Cariño elevates the banal and mundane to render them as an all important labor that has sustained the Maguindanaon throughout centuries of glorious albeit tumultuous history. But with strife taking its toll: most of the brass, kept by families from generation to generation, are no longer there. They have become trophies of war, their weight a burden to the Maguindanaon who have endured the hardships brought upon by decades of war. Through Cariño’s careful hands, the artist has brought them back at the center of his canvas, thematizing what is now absent as the permeating presence that will remain the Maguindanaon’s source of pride.” (Teng Mangansakan, curator)