Poleteismo • Mideo Cruz
In 2011, a controversial exhibit was inaugurated in the Bulwagang Juan Luna of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
The Artist, Mideo Cruz, entitled the exhibit: Poleteismo. The exhibit sported many cultural and religious taboos, obscenities juxtaposed against religious imagery. Needless to say, the exhibit was met with uproar, not only from the extremely influential Roman Catholic Church, also from the wife of the notorious late Dictator, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., Imelda Romualdez Marcos.
Most controversial, at least for the Roman Catholic Church, was the image of a cross, with phallic imagery and rosaries beside each other. The installation timed coincidentally with the debates spurred on by the proposal of the Reproductive Health Law which eventually passed into legislation the following year.
When Medio was interviewed, he noted that the exhibit was meant to portray power and idolatry: how the Philippines was mired with identity politics, powerplays, and the delicate balance between institutions and the people. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he is quoted to have said: “I see it as a methodology: how people show their accomplishments, connections, attachment and devotion. It is also a process -- how we want to be recognised or be seen on the surface, with a bit of subtlety. The Philippines was named after King Philip II, a Spanish monarch with a great passion for relics. The work is composed of relics I personally collected since high school -- things that we grew up with and things that reflect our society and us. The uproar it created may be the unconscious denial of seeing ourselves truthfully in the mirror.”
Clement Greenberg’s idea regarding the role of art in the modern society is a very timely proscenium to use in assessing the value and impact of the artwork and artist in question. He believed that art, like religion, should also be criticised. Going further, he asserts that “modernism criticises from the inside,” i.e., the modern paradigm is characterised by the utilisation of the criticised medium to deliver its critique. Mideo Cruz and his art embody this.
As a fervent Catholic, raised within the four confines of the Church, even serving as an Altar Server in my old parish in Tondo, this exhibit was anathema. It was blasphemous and heretical. However, for those who do not hold fast to the Catholic Faith, I believe it has fulfilled its job: it has ushered in conversation, encouraged debate, and shed light on the topics most FIlipinos in the early 2010’s did not even dare speak that loud on.
The best irony, perhaps, with the whole incident, is how Imelda, known for her imeldific and traditionalistic (albeit erroneous and blatantly corrupt) practices, became of the leading voices in support of the early closure of the exhibit installed in what many consider the crowning glory of her Edifice Complex. Imelda, known for her staunch Roman Catholicism, was herself denounced and opposed by the local Church Hierarchy for her husband’s brutal, inhumane, and undemocratic regime, still sharing in the Church’s sentiments regarding the moral depravity exhibited in the Cultural Centre, while herself being guilty of moral crimes — of which we still have yet to receive apologies from: modern critique and irony does not get better than that.
In the end, Mideo made his point, and he used the Church and Imelda to prove it.
