LIVE Biennale Performance – Solo Performances: Mideo Cruz & Racquel De Loyola

Mideo Cruz

Notions of self as nation are currently besieged, their inner gut work sucked out by a voracious globalist zeitgeist funded by large late capital. To cite a potential contribution to one’s national culture would have to be determinedly conceited on mine or Mideo’s part, but, if one might be able to determine such a lofty yet necessarily foundational category, then one would have to support those who have been consistent, bold and willing to sustain its thankless, uphill climb, for all that takes. Mideo Cruz has so far shown himself to be equal to this. The nationalist project of Social Realism in the Phillipines, which began in 1975, has found, after the co-opted faltering of Salingpusa and untimely implosion of Sanggawa, an appropriate bridge into the 21st century’s vast, bewildering and fractured terrain in Mide Cruz and his colletcive, the new world disorder. ~ Jose Tence Ruiz

Raquel De Loyola
Mebuyan

Racquel de Loyola’s work addresses the issues of women, colonization, identity, migration, displacement, capitalism and globalization. This lamentation of a multi-breasted creature is a contemporary rendition of Mebuyan, an ancient Filipino myth of the Bagobo tribe. Mebuyan is hte nurturer of the village. In contemporary time,s it may mean the need to sacrifice in order for the community to continue to exist, or perhaps the motherland providing sustenance to her people. The accompanying melody, Tula ni Oryang, is a kundiman song taken from a poem of Gregoria “Oryang” de Jesus, the widow of Andres Bonifacio, a Filipino hero from the later period of Spanish colonization. Even without understanding the lyrics, the sense of grief is compelling.

A co-production of LIVE Performance Art Biennale, Gallery Gachet and Sinag Bayan Cultural Collective.