BenCab and the Cordilleras
ABBY TAN VISITS BENCAB’S EXCITING NEW PROJECT TO PRESERVE AND CELEBRATE THE ANCIENT IGOROT CULTURE. PHOTOGRAPHY BY WALTER VILLA
The address is simply Kilometer 36, Asin, but this could be Baguio City’s next cultural pilgrimage destination. This organic farm/residence/studio/gallery/museum spread over a steep mountain slope, is going to be the culmination of Benedicto Cabrera’s life and career. For the artist Benedicto Reyes Cabrera, known as BenCab, being conferred the Order of National Artist for Visual Arts in 2006 has just fast-forwarded the fulfillment of a long-held dream: to create a showcase of the Cordillera culture of the mountainous North Philippines.
“This is the ideal place to contemplate and work,” declares the artist, on the stunning landscape which is nearing completion.
Arguably, the most successful Filipino artist commercially, BenCab has found his own paradise where he is going to live, farm and paint. He is still creating it – and has been for three years now – like a work of art, to make sure elements of beauty, color and tranquility are proportionately balanced and well-placed.
BenCab’s paradise is easy to find. About six kilometers outside Baguio, on the road going west where it steeply winds to the right, your vision is arrested by two white structures on the left, that stand out in the middle of profuse green. The smaller building is his one-bedroom house (complete with fireplace), and an open corridor links it to a larger building housing the studio/gallery where he paints and works.
From the outside looking down, the seven flights of terraces contour to a rushing river. Looking west, to the right, is La Union and the South China Sea. On clear days when the fog lifts, there are spectacular sunsets.
BenCab walks his guests down the terraces, pointing out with pride that the Igorots (Cordillera natives) helped him construct them, using the 2,000-year-old technology that has made the Cordillera rice paddies world famous. From the lowest terrace you can look up to see several traditional Igorot huts, deliberately placed to emphasise the contrast with the ultra-modern, clean-lined house/studio/ gallery. To the right, a waterfall drains into various layers of water-cress, forests of torch ginger, patches of lettuce and groves of fruit trees that make up the organic farm. Pots of bonsai are scattered by his friend, Philippine bonsai champion Bobby Gopiao, who is the adviser on landscaping the four hectares of cantilevered slopes. Little gold and red carp are splattering in the pond among the colorful water lilies. From any angle, the landscape is well composed for a painting. Architect Edward Gagarin is finishing the third structure, the museum, which sits on the top terrace. This is going to be BenCab’s pride and joy, and as he says, his legacy as National Artist.
BenCab defines his legacy as “sharing” the artefacts he has hoarded, and the skills and wisdom he has accumulated. His museum therefore has two focuses of display: Cordillera art and a collection of paintings by young Philippine artists as well as his own works.
The highlight of the Cordillera exhibit is a collection of 100 lime tabayag (containers), a component used in the social ritual of betel nut chewing among the tribes. They are finely crafted, made of bone, weaved baskets and even scrotums of deer. BenCab had a book published on his tabayag collection when he realized the value of this art on seeing a poster of the Louvre Museum in Paris featuring a Cordillera ritual box. “This made me realize that Cordillera art must be important and it has been underestimated,” he says.
He considers Cordillera art to be the true Filipino art without the Christian influence, and wants to put together a museum-standard exhibition where anthropologists and cultural researchers can see them. There is much urgency in his mission to preserve this art form: “It is disappearing. I see some people now using Johnson’s baby oil plastic bottles to keep the lime,” he sighs regretfully.
The museum is one way of sharing his knowledge and skills, and is seen as a step up from the Tam-Awan Village, that he and other Baguio artists co-founded, which now showcases indigenous craftsmanship.
The huge collection of BenCab’s own creativity – his drawings, etchings in oil and charcoal and forays into all mediums such as resin sculptures, plasma torch-cut sculptures and digital media – all need a home.
How he ended up with so much can be found in three dictums that have ruled his life:
I collect.“What will I do with these collections? When an artist dies, he has to leave something behind—a legacy, I guess.”
I catalog. All his works are neatly recorded. “Why? Art is useless if not seen,” he says. He is not adverse to self-promotion and has published his own coffee table book on his paintings, called BenCab; the book on his lime containers, Tabayag: Lime Containers of the Cordilleras — From the Collection of BenCab; and in the works is a new book of his nude etchings, tentatively titled Eros.
I share. He makes his possessions accessible to the public to “share with the people what would be part of my taste, or personal, subjective collection.” He regrets that the best Filipino art is held tightly in private homes rather than being on display in museums.
Being the National Artist has meant a bigger public profile and he gets invited more often to cut ribbons, judge art shows, and to talk at regional art conferences in Southeast Asia. The public duties are both a responsibility and an obligation, he says.
In response to catty talk that he was too young and successful to be National Artist, he says: “I am one of the healthier recipients.”
He adds: “I think it is a good idea that the National Artist be awarded when the artists are still active, that’s when they can share.”
His own tall, lanky frame belies his 65 years. Soft-spoken, BenCab struggles to articulate his thoughts. He is better speaking through his art. His skills as a social commentator of his era came out in his Larawan I and II series on the Filipino migrant workers; Rock Sessions, 70 sketches of Filipino rock stars such as Joey Ayala, Pepe Smith and Eraserheads; and he depicted Japanese abuse against Filipino women during World War II at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan in 1999.
However, it is Sabel, the street bag lady who has become the BenCab icon. His paintings of a poor woman, strong yet maternal, and in many variations, continue to be his best seller. He saw her near his mother’s house in Manila and she who would appear on the street with a different look each time. He watched her change over the years, from a young woman with short hair to a pregnant person with long hair in different types of dresses.
“There will be a pop musical about her,” reveals BenCab. Stage director Freddie Santos has written the libretto, and Louie Ocampo composed the music. Mi Sabel the musical will be staged in 2008. Sabel, his muse, had already been portrayed earlier in ballets at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
BenCab has come a long way from his days of relative famine in London in the 1970s, where he had settled with his three children. Although his first exhibition in the gallery of Roy Hodges (ex-husband of English actress Glenda Jackson who had bought eight of his paintings) in 1970 was a sell-out, commercial success eluded him.
Only when he returned home in 1986 and settled in Baguio did Filipino buyers start to relate and appreciate his art. He depicted human issues, such as the aftermath of the major 1991 Baguio earthquake, the typhoons, and the soup kitchens he and other artists set up to help the victims. “I portray concerns that affect everyone, rich or poor,” he adds. “They are universal themes.”
BenCab’s success is also part of a discipline that was drummed into him by six elder sisters who would order him to, “clean up the floor, clean up the room.” At his workplace, the neat and tidy side is obvious. Every paintbrush has its place. Even his stubby white beard is neatly trimmed to lend dignity to a status that he has cultivated meticulously. “Everything I have done I didn’t envision, I just do!” he insists.
His relative youth and a new title only serve to spur him on. “If your cup is full, you have to empty it,” he philosophizes. “It’s a struggle, you have to reinvent yourself, like Madonna (the entertainer), creativity is all about having to evolve.”
Often saying, “I refuse to hit the ceiling”, BenCab can easily switch roles, from artist and social commentator to gentleman farmer, as he walks out to the terraces to tend to his leeks, sweet potatoes, orchids and heliconias. He remains calm and blissful in his organized world… A world which will soon be open to us all.
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