Reimagining the narratives of the past: the UP Vargas Museum highlights works by Lee Paje and Ampannee Satoh

At the West Wing Gallery of the UP Vargas Museum were works by Paje that altogether explore and question colonial, traditional and heteronormative perspectives from history. Her Beyond the Edge, Embodied Horizons exhibition, which received support from the Goethe-Institut Philippinen and Tin-Aw Art Management, features new print reproductions by Paje of the first book published in the Philippines, inscribed with alternative myths and histories. Central to it, and rightfully given a dedicated dark-lit room, is an installation work made of serigraph, watercolour and acrylic, which were cut out and hung in Leporello or accordion pleat style. The pages, including the framed ones in the hall, combine texts and figures that reconfigure an origin story, depicting Paje’s suggestion of shifting towards narratives that go beyond the boundaries of conventional histories and imbuing history with fantasy to generate a fluid interpretation of identities.

During Paje’s exhibition opening, the reception’s highlight was Unbound: A body, sound, and movement performance by Body Archive founder and Daloy Dance Company collaborating artist Deborah Lemuel; independent theatre and film actor-performance artist-educator Serena Magiliw and theatre artist, teacher and healing arts practitioner Opaline Santos, under the direction of Jasper Villasis, a performer and director for stage, street and alternative spaces.

In this artistic dialogue, water is seen as an element and conduit, with the human bodies rendered as waves crashing into each other during a storm. This complemented Satoh’s exhibition, where the sea, which the mysterious hijab-wearing woman in some photos solemnly observes in La Rochelle and which quietly embraces Patani’s abandoned huts, serves as a haunting witness to histories of exploitation, survival and loss across time.

Elements are laid one over the other in both exhibitions to add, conceal or emphasise figures or surfaces through the technique of superimposition. In Paje’s works, human forms in different poses are alternately embedded into or emerge from foliage and greenery sprouting from the first page excerpts of Doctrina Christiana en lengua española y tagala, which is basically a Spanish alphabet guide. In Satoh’s Du port de patani port au port de La Rochelle 01, a Muslim woman wearing a striking and immaculately white hijab stands before the towers of La Chaîne and Saint-Nicholas, two historical landmarks formerly used as medieval fortifications in the 14th century. Considering that the Saint-Nicholas later turned into a prison for Protestants who refused to renounce their faith and be converted to Catholicism during the 17th century offers another insight into reading the two exhibitions—the institutional authority of the Catholic Church that influenced how people identified themselves and situated themselves in the world.

Museum volunteer Margo Giltendez, in her short feature about the two exhibitions posted by the museum, wrote: “Both Ampannee Satoh’s and Lee Paje’s artworks reveal the imprints of religious encounters, those gleaned from histories and linked to present-day cultures. Language, garments and built structures are material evidence of persistent symbolic tensions surrounding the practices of religious faith.”

But not all institutions are meant to withstand the test of time. Amidst the towers in La Rochelle being mute witnesses to the slave trade that once flourished in the region, the abolition of such contributed to the port’s eventual decline. Similarly, in the Philippines, wider perspectives on gendered identities and the shaping of the Filipino consciousness amidst the colonial forces from its past blossomed and continue to create tension to this day in the sociopolitical landscape. The colossal waves painted on Paje’s works evoke this presence.

The fluid and suppressed narratives of gender and minority groups weave both exhibitions. How Satoh, a Thai Muslim woman photographer, occupies and memorialises spaces of reflection and oppression, and how Filipino queer artist Paje locates and reimagines non-conforming identities in traditional histories, invite us to critically examine subjects outside the boundaries or norms of the dominant power structures.

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