MANILA, Philippines - For a month now, the front lawn of the Cultural Center of the Philippines along Roxas Boulevard has been the venue for an environmental art piece, “Angud: A Forest Once,” by Los Baños Laguna-based artist Junyee.
This unusual art project was launched during Earth Day on April 22, with ceremonies that involved dancers and actors performing within and around the work.
The adjective environmental bears closer examination here, as it operates in various levels and could serve as key toward a deeper appreciation of this public art project: art from, about and as environment.
Art from the environment
First, this artwork sprawling across one hectare of open land consists of some 10,000 angud pieces collected from the provinces of Aurora and Quezon.
As it turns out, illegal logging in our country is carried out not only by large-scale logging concessionaires but, more disturbingly, also by individual residents in dire need of day-to-day subsistence. Compared to log-bearing trucks that are easy to spot and apprehend, individual pieces can easily be spirited away like fine sand filtering through a sieve.
After a tree is felled, a hole is bored at one of its ends so that the lumber may be pulled with a rope (usually by carabao) out of the forest into a clearing. This end part with the hole, called angud, is then sawn off and discarded for charcoal. Junyee’s artistic intervention involves the rescuing of these angud pieces by utilizing them as materials for art.
Art about the environment
Aside from sourcing its materials from the environment, “Angud” is also about the environment, particularly about our personal accountability in the continuing denudation of forests. From a distance, the installation piece can look like a graveyard, and the subtitle, “A Forest Once,” confirms this perception.
Looking closely, one will notice that the individual pieces are connected to one another by red nylon ropes, perhaps alluding to the way the logs were pulled out of the forest, but more importantly suggesting diverse elements in an ecosystem are interconnected like a complex web.
By directing our attention to the plight of our forests, “Angud” is able to repay Mother Nature for providing the raw materials for this art project.
Art as environment
Finally, “Angud” is also an environment in itself, that is, it offers a particular experience of outdoor space much more than a two-dimensional painting or even a three-dimensional sculpture could. Instead of merely being located in some place, the sheer magnitude of the work asserts itself as a location and a place.
The CCP front lawn, which used to be a void taken for granted by daily commuters and passers-by, has been transformed into a “presence,” something that cannot be ignored as it heightens the drama of traversing the busy intersection of Roxas Boulevard and P. Ocampo Street (formerly Vito Cruz).
If in previous instances visitors would have their picture taken with the CCP main building as backdrop, this time they could have “Angud” as the site of their pictorials. The resulting photographs and countless other images taken by many others become the documentation wherein this ephemeral art piece would continue to exist, that is, in the environment of memory and imagination.
“Angud” will be dismantled beginning June 5. This project was made possible with the support of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Metrobank Foundation, and artist-friends Ramon Orlina and Fil dela Cruz. Collaborating artists include Hermisanto and Gerry Inco.
