By Wilhelmina S. Orozco
What defines a woman’s art? It’s her consciousness. No other reason exists for a woman to paint but to put out into the open what her mind conceives of society, what she feels about the people around her, and what she needs to assert is her view of her own world.
Pamela Yan’s art exhibit, They are Birds if They Fly strikes me as a very well conceived exhibit, showing her view of a domestic life, delimited within the views of her own child, Juno, and of her home. She paints with great realism – the people, every nook and corner of her home, the scenes that she sees through her son’s eyes and her own, She expresses her views in paintings that evoke a quiet surrender, a complacent and comfortable yet meditative existence in the hearth that she has built with her family.
Look for 10 Seconds shows four faucets possibly dripping and which attracts the attention of her child so much that reportedly she has to delimit him into ten seconds. But then those ten seconds could also mean a whole lot of drops dripping that could be very significant to many a waterless homes. So what comes out as a captured attention of her child screams at that defect in society, the lack of water, the need for attention to this problem – the scarcity of water – from the authorities.
Actually, this painting could very well be a very catchy propaganda for the current campaign of Congresswoman Bernardita Herrera-Dy to bring down the price of water services in the country.
Then the series of bird cages are highly conceived implicit potshots at those women liberationists who think the home is confining, restricting of women’s movements. Inside them, Pamela has painted and installed different scenes. Supervised Play has several plastic balls inside the birdcage depicting the toys of a child. Comfort Zone is a declaration of sexual liberation as inside the cage lies a very inviting bed, made of polystyrene foam, and with a pillow. Stuffed Chicken of sewn canvas stuffed with cotton and coconut husk signifies how a home can be a setting for a delicious meal. Sanctuary has a garden with plants – acrylic, felt powder and synthetic fibers on polystyrene foam—implying that having earth even in a small corner, is as important as having a home, a soft commentary on the lack of greenery in most condominium units. Then of course, A Piece of Heaven shows us that – the sky in great azure blue with clouds passing by on canvas. The home is a piece of heaven that we can build anytime.
The More You___ The More You Will Not Go Up is a painting of a staircase from below and looking up to a window in the ceiling showing piece of the sky. Why this title? It is not a command but a hint that when you fill in the blank, then the conclusion will be true. The more you procrastinate, or the more you become overly ambitious, or the more you corrupt the people, and so forth and so on, then the more you will not go up. “Up” could mean heaven; hence the painting hints at the need for spirituality to enter every act of our lives. Pam seems to ask, aren’t we lacking something, a drawing in into our souls? Where are we heading to in this ascent to anything – career or business or love? Will it bring us to heaven?
Rest Room seems like two paintings brought together as one side shows a door painted with light coming from above and then the other, a room with a man seated and watching a small toy house with glass windows. The door is too realistic, highly inviting us to open it and then it could reveal something significant to us. But it is closed. Should we open it or not? If we do, where will it lead us?
But then Pam gives the answer – the door opens to a room where a man seems to be contemplating the house –Who could fit into this house? Will this be a home or just a structure to put a roof over people? Who would inhabit this house? What kind of people are they? Will I build a home or a house?
Yes, the painting looks mundane but it makes us view life together with the man. It makes us ask questions which otherwise probably we would be too busy to ask. No, the room is not a place for resting.
_________ will wear a dress is a painting of women. Only the woman at the center is painted realistically wearinga dress made of colorful patches of cloths while the rest are all in gray. Why is she colorful? I have been told that Pam’s son, Juno, a special child, always says when she is going to stay at home and not leave the house, “Mommy will wear a dress.” And so in the eyes of Juno, mommy’s presence shall lend color to his life, and everything else is dull without her. Mom is everything to the child as he is still too small and vulnerable to protect himself from the outside world.
The piece de resistance of the exhibit is Please Handle With Care, a wooden cabinet with tiers for holding chinaware on its upper half, and many smaller cabinets containing various kitchen items in the lower half. The cabinet is filled with plates, glasses, cups, saucers, silverware, a knife, a pitcher, and many, many more things that we use in the kitchen and the dining room.
What moves us very much is that all of these, in this huge wooden cabinet, 213.35 x 213.35 x 50.8 centimeters, are covered with yellow paper containing words, millions of words, repeated and repeated without end.
This seemingly suggests that the kitchen and the dining room are places for conversations between and among people. The word or words are highly important in the connections that we make with and among our loved ones; they could be repetitious but then what is life without repetition?
We could very well repeat a word, to give emphasis to an idea. We could say a word again to make the other listen to us; we could ask and ask again until we get that needed response to a problem, an idea that confuses us; a feeling that is unresolved, unexpressed; a dream that needs fulfillment.
Or we could also be repeating the words and phrases to ourselves, speaking aloud as to why we are here on earth.
Interesting is the placing of the wooden cabinet, at the back of the gallery, but facing the door. Our eyes get glued on it because it seems to be wrapped diagonally by a yellow plastic ribbon with the word, “fragile” repeated several times. Coming close to it, I found that the ribbon is just painted over the small doors of the little cabinets. Now, the word “fragile” means delicate; so then it should be handled with care. What should be handled with care are not only the items inside the cabinet but the way they are used by people.
Hence, Pam gives us the feeling that the kitchen and the dining rooms are the most important areas in the home. These are the places where – in the kitchen, we prepare the food that will nourish our lives; and in the dining room, we dine and drink to sustain our bodies, and when with other members whether family or friends – where we could converse and talk about what has happened to us during the day and more deeply, what we still want from life.
Pam is telling us another idea: we must take care of those areas in the home where we could speak to one another. No it does not matter if we repeat words and phrases. What is important is for us to keep the conversation running because that is what normal people do – we talk to express our feelings, our desires and our dreams.
The exhibit evokes a lot of questions about existence from inside a home yet these are not commanding, screaming, nor making us feel guilty about harboring certain non-traditional conceptions of what a house, a home should be. Rather, the art pieces make us contemplate, reflect and even meditate on what we have made of our homes.
I have been told that the exhibit was largely influenced by Pam’s interaction with Juno. But then, seeing life through him, Pam could very well be telling us that special children have a big role to play in the larger society as they see things that many of us do not in our haste to live, to enrich ourselves, to acquire status or to reach for power.
Thus, Pam’s eyes as a painter are very keen in perceiving relationships of people, and of people to things around them. She actually renders truth to what Marion Woodman, a psychoanalyst from Canada, in that interview by a Sounds True producer that artists are the shamans of the world.
What are shamans? Shamans, who could be women or men, are spiritual guides who connect us with our inner and outer worlds. They tell or hint at what we are facing at present and then show us the possibilities and probabilities of an event, an idea, a solution, a cause or even just a plain feeling.
Pam is a shaman as she makes us feel that in every part of our existence there is life pulsating and we just need be sensitive – feel and look -- and then we will find the answer or probably, the possible answers to what we are looking and asking for whether in our personal or social lives.
I particularly like the lay-out of the exhibit. From the outside, our eyes are drawn to the wooden cabinet right away. Then as we enter the gallery, to the right are the birdcages, a seeming introduction to what we can have in a home; from there, the series of paintings begins.
The lay-out also allows us to quietly contemplate each artwork regaling us with lessons in looking at our existence.
Pam’s exhibit runs from 23 September to 8 October 2011 at the Tin-Aw Gallery located at upper g/f, Somerset Olympia Makati, Makati Ave. corner Sto. Tomas St. Makati City. Gallery hours are from Monday – Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Phone: 632 892 7522. www.tin-aw.com.
PS Juno, some birds are called birds even if they don't fly. What is important is that they have wings for flying if they want to.
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