Our obsession with heroes and earnest good men is palpable because of their triumphs over their ordeals which we all would want to emulate. It perhaps also a way we project our own cultural needs onto these characters, our need for a hero due to the fact that we live in such times of helplessness and chaos. Because of such obsessions, oftentimes our concept of evil seems limited and biased but the presence of evil in human drama remains constant and has such parallel indelibility in our collective consciousness.
Kanto Artist Run Space invites us to wear the black hat with this gallery of historical nefarious icons and poster boys of evil with the works of Kris Abrigo and Frances Abrigo.
Despot is a show that puts us into self- interrogation and confrontation with the dark side of history with the figures with haunting faces of malevolence and personalities regarded as perfect embodiment of evil with their murderous gaze, aura of unredeemable vileness and devilish charisma.
These are images of dictators whose years of authoritarian rule were responsible for sycophant and undemocratic order in their lands where dissent is stifled and abuses are abound. To their people, they are often regarded with fear or unsettling sympathy if not blind loyalty.
History, pop culture, media and literature especially in dystopian fiction essentially portrays them as the death mongers, neurotic, brutal figure who unleash merciful actions against the protagonists and innocent populations. They are also viewed as the Machiavellian types viewed as dangerous opponents, downright ignominiously horrid or worse, pitiful with conflicted and complex characters often full of hate and contempt. Also oftentimes they are possessed with narcissistic rage as theorized by Sigmund Freud, are full of delusion, depression, self-wrath and detachment and just the archetypal evil ones and amoral misfits whom we all regard as the scheming provider of conflict and those who sow havoc and destruction.
Because our biases can be at times, our own worst enemy, the exhibit suggests looking at the artworks in a facetious and playful way as the artists also meant to insinuate questions and poke fun, all in the name of healthy humor. Our objects or subjects of repugnance can also bewitch that it can riddle us to look away from our dread and revulsion and biases against what we just immediately perceive as evil.
But visualizing these posterboys of evil does equate to paying homage to their villainy or atonement of their evil acts, more so it presents an artistic appropriation to look into how we connect with images and how it relates to our cultural norms and our immediate memories. It is to use iconography to look at how images manipulate our biases.
As it generates an atmosphere for communal self address, the show to an extent provides a critical directive to view such relational cultural histories of morals and understanding of the past and immediate history.
As there are real imagined and imagined villains, consciously or unconsciously we sometimes wittingly or unwittingly shift our alliances and align ourselves with them. Beyond the veneer or marked sinister gaze of these evil men, it gives rise to fact that antagonism and conflict are part essentially part of nature and gives us the choice to do good.
Kanto Artist Run Space is located at The Collective, 7474 Malugay Street, San Antonio Village, Makati City.
