BAGUIA
Just like that, we have come to the second month of the year. For us here at Cebu Daily News, it is the month of our 20th birthday. For romantics, it’s the month of love. For cultural workers, teacher and students, it is arts month.
Prof. Ligaya Rabago-Visaya teaches the pioneering senior high class in Philippine arts at University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu. Monday this week, she rallied her students to the opening ceremonies of the celebration.
Dancers clad in black, their faces painted white performed at the entrance of the Cebu Cultural Center to the beat of a percussion band and with choreography inspired by the seven arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, dance and performing.
Prof. Catherine Rodel, the high school principal and Prof. Purita Baltazar, secretary of the College of Social Sciences cut the ribbon to open the monthlong festival just in time for the dancers to surge through the high school corridor, followed by a throng of students eagerly joining in the dance.
On the opposite side of Gorordo Avenue, in the Jose T. Joya Gallery, Prof. Yvette Malahay-Kim, coordinator of UP Cebu’s fine arts program had opened a prelude to arts month set to conclude on February 9.
Like many teachers at the university, Professor Malahay-Kim does not only teach. She also practices what she teaches. She paints, and by a grace-filled scheme of things, when she has time, she dives.
Her exhibit of paintings titled “NUDi EXpposed” showcases how time spent underwater informs her visual artistry and legitimizes its interdisciplinarity.
The paintings are larger than life, naturalist renderings of Nudibranchs or sea slugs photographed by her diving associates.
Each painting opens one’s eyes to the beauty hidden in our seas and offers new understandings of the concept of earth colors as each slug wears them.
“Diamond Nudi. Chromodoris willani” magnifies a nudibranch photographed by Dennis Trillo. The piece reminded me of a vast desert punctuated by the enduring, weathered vegetation that dares to grow amid aridity.
But it also took me to the skies with its blue glow that is reminiscent of the stillness of a distant planet.
“Figure study: Goniobranchus coi,” based on a photograph by Andre Montenegro can be many things depending on one’s imagination. The cream underside calls to mind a white-vested dancing bride or a drooping orchid bloom, but the top is as fancy as a royal’s summer hat.
“Nudi White: Ardeadoris eggretta” publicizes a previously unpublished picture of a sea slug by the renowned visual anthropologist Francisco Guerrero. Professor Malahay-Kim’s palette’s pulled me to the fantastic realm of Oz.
This painting occurs to me as the centerpiece of the exhibit, and each time I looked at it, I have forgotten that I was seeing the blown up representation of a slug, but imagined some new, nebulous, lovely gift being conjured by Fair Glinda of the emerald city.
Her nudibranch collection’s ability to captivate the viewer towards contemplation of beauty makes Professor Malahay-Kim’s recent works a success.
That beauty in art must help her achieve her social goals for this batch of obras: to underscore the value of the beautiful that thrives in our marine habitats in the face of threats brought about by man’s cavalier treatment of the seas.
In the month of love, the month of art, the prettiest of Professor Malahay-Kim’s molluscs point us to a thought that I paraphrase from another professor, the late C.S. Lewis: beauty, “like art, philosophy has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”
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