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REDEFINING MARIA CLARA
A female artist re-imagines the classic Filipina in a familiar more contemporary setting
How do you start to look for Maria Clara? Jovan Benito approaches this challenge by heading for the most unlikely of places: the market. In her series of market scenes, she espouses both a genuine nostalgia for the rural life of the past and a contemporary but approachable naïf aesthetic, recalling a time when families worked together and expectations for women revolved around tasks in the market and in the fields.
As a young school girl, the 26 year old artist saw her father paint signs and movie billboards, a vocation that ruined his health and cost him his life. Undaunted by such risks in the trade, Benito was driven to sketch and paint illustration boards using acrylic paints. It was during her apprenticeship under her husband, artist Jerry Morada, one of the country’s foremost painters of romantic surrealism, that she was introduced to oil, now her medium of choice.
Benito deliberately breaks away from the existential themes and drama of her UP educated husband's works. Thus her stylized figures play the foil to Morada's women in desolation. No damsels in distress, these contemporary Maria Claras defy stereotypes of sheltered unica hijas. They are day-to-day heroines whose connection to Rizal's character goes beyond donning the dress that bears her name. Benito presents her contemporary heroines in a one-woman show titled "Eyes Wide Open" at Galerie Joaquin Podium. Benito will be presenting 16 of her recent works. The show opens October 15, 2008 and runs until October 29. Galerie Joaquin Podium is located at Unit B12-B13, Lower Ground Level, The Podium, ADB Avenue, Ortigas Center Mandaluyong City with telephone number 6347954. For more information visit www.galeriejoaquin.com.
This exhibit comes at a fortuitous time considering that her work "Market Scene" recently sold at the Masterpiece auction (August 2008) in Singapore with final price (buyer’s premium and GST included) of S$ 6,792 (P 217,344).
Unhampered by butterfly sleeves, Benito's figures earn a living while staying prim, not sweating in the midday sun, their hair piled high in neat buns. They stay as fresh, inviting and accessible to the viewer and invisible passersby as the flowers, fish and fruits they carry with their soft hands and tiny feet.
These Maria Claras interact tightlipped-conversations are held through innocent glances, hearsay shared through suspicious stares and knowing looks—an art form in itself and, like the handiwork of Benito's father, a fast disappearing scene in today’s age of the internet and the mobile phone.
Drawing inspiration from a friend's sleepy eyes, Benito finds half-open eyelids unexpectedly expressive. Perhaps her style accommodates the appreciation of her two toddlers, who enjoy watching her paint in the afternoon. Working until the wee hours listening to old Filipino songs likewise lends her canvases a sentimentality for an era long past.
When not in the studio, Benito goes out into the hills of Laguna in attentive search of striking details to incorporate into her pieces. Back in her workspace, she composes scenes against a solid wall of color and revels in the vivid patterns of the clothes she adores, paying tribute to the work, womanhood and the wisdom of the everyday Maria Clara. And there, in the quaint group portraits, we find her, Jovan Benito, an embodiment of the subjects that she so carefully and in a very detailed manner captures in her canvas. |
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