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| Shooting Targets |
Like a trusted
best friend, his aluminum cane was a constant witness to the vicissitudes of surviving
his daily existence. They both hurdled and even endured every ordeal together.
Victoria even nervously confessed it is hardest when it rained because the floor will be so
wet and slippery making the rubber on his aluminum cane unavoidably slide—it
never failed to make him eventually slip.
Through the years, the aluminum cane would bear scratches that has become fixtures to its impressionable metal surface. Victoria had become familiar with them that he knew all the behind-the-scenes stories how he got them. As a sensitive artist these marks made an impression on him that he wanted to replicate the certain fixtures like tattoos inked on one’s skin for posterity. Eventually this made his dabble with aluminum etching and in his solo exhibition, Hindi Kami Mamamatay he emerges from his comfort zone and takes a pun intended at what is happening to his surroundings and in our social history.
Victoria merges the mechanical, the graphic and the political into a lyrically composed picture. In Robot Victoria testifies his industrial prowess as Victoria proves that we have been bred artificially and controlled all through our postcolonial sojourn.
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| Robot |
In Chainsaw, Victoria illustratively implies
more than the plea for the environment but an appeal for growth and decency and
return of basic freedom in our contemporary midst—to think and to feel for our
destiny as a nation. A powerful tool this weapon has become the symbol of the
earth’s demise and Victoria’s lateral evocation on metal is surefire to make
its presence feared and felt by fallen witnesses.
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| Chainsaw |
Garbed in
turn-of-the century attire, Victoria’s women are sly and does not possess
anything but timid. They stare intently in your eyes like putting up a fight
and instructing you to follow and obey what was demanded of you. Victoria has immensely
appropriated them using the real intentions of the colonizers upon us. In
short, the sepia or rustic finish of the metal may emanate yet they get back
and amplify visual revenge in sync with solid message contained in the coldness
of steel.
They say Antonio Luna’s men were the sharpest of vanguards. In Shooting Targets however betrayal was the culprit as these soldiers were collateral damage as Aguinaldo navigated his power to cause the tragedy of the revolution. We were the incidental victims of military operations not of our instigating. They were about two colliding empires and we were just the spoils of war.
Consider Oil Well where Victoria digs deep to the root causes of our economic miseries lie beneath the earth and the quest for oil is the culprit. Energy is power thus corrupt absolutely. Petroleum rules the economy and that rollbacks are basic as right to education and shelter. In the end, there is no poor third world country since they have been exploited many times over—through generations.
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| Power Grid |
The
brilliance of Victoria is how in sync is his mechanism as he mixes while he
nixes the political with graphical. In Back
Hoe he employs his women with mechanism connoting subversion and ploy. Not
a hard sell imagery, his revised iconography is so convincing that you want to
turn on the switch to start it to play.
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| Slot Machine |
World War
II has also been on Victoria’s mind ever since he had been reading that up as a
child. We really do not have our own battles and we always sided on the wrong
side of the fence. In the end, it is the Filipinos who bury the brunt and worse
suffer the consequences. Victoria does not see himself as a messiah but simply
as a concerned artist who is a product of his times.
Man of Steel
Educated in advertising at the University of Santo Tomas, Victoria professionally and trained in animation versed in the corporate world. For ten years setting aside the visual arts, Victoria was once again invited on group exhibitions being a member of Kalye Kolektib. In his first exhibition, Coping Mechanism, two years ago, he paid homage to every nook and cranny of his personal life--as he has been fixated with metal as an ode to his aluminum cane.
Victoria prefers aluminum etching and he has been effective in using it. He relies heavily on research and appropriates his image to suit his desired iconography. After painting the appropriated form with enamel, he soaks them in resin to resist. The final process he uses aluminum brush to add texture to the rough finish.
The emanating Chinese presence once again makes its presence felt as evident in Victoria’s Destroyer Type 052 as in 2013 the Philippines initiated international arbitration against the People's Republic of China (China) regarding its territorial and maritime dispute in the South China Sea – known as the West Philippine Sea in Manila.
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| Type 052 Destroyer |
The oldest and largest Chinatown is in Manila and the Chinese have been a cultural presence even before any colonizer came. Another sordid reminders are the pogo persistence in Slot Machine. Everywhere we go there is a Chinese who is gambling in our shores.
Context
and memory play powerful roles in Victoria’s masterpieces. Hindi Kami Mamamatay may yet be Victoria at his most political yet
it is him at his most innovative. Borne out of years of trying to contain
himself, Victoria focused his energies to uplift his spirit and and graphically
found light at the end of the tunnel. In a way, we are clearly at a long
overdue moment in history where we look at ourselves and reclaim our future
that was ours.
Hindi Kami Mamamatay is a constant refrain to our song when fading. One could picture Victoria like a bird that senses the dawn and carefully starts to sing while it is still dark—when metal shines brightly.
Hindi Kami Mamamatay is ongoing at the Eskinita Art Farm in Tanauan, Batangas
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