Brown Man's Burden
signed and dated 2019 (lower right)
oil on canvas
60" x 83 1/2" (152cmx212cm)




In Brown Man’s Burden, Juanito Torres compellingly subverts the concepts of colonization and imperialism. The work’s title references the 1899 poem by Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” where the author expresses his strong support for the US colonization of the Philippine Islands as part of its political and philosophical mandate to “civilize” the “savage,” non- white peoples. In this piece, Torres depicts the three nations that colonized the Philippines: Spain, the United States, and Imperial Japan. Spain is represented by a friar, presumably Padre Damaso of Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere. An encaged woman wearing the traditional baro’t saya symbolizes Inang Bayan, the personification of the Philippines. Butterflies fly unbridled from her faceless image, denoting the struggle and uncompromising resistance of the Filipinos for independence from Madre España. A soldier donned in the military uniform of the American forces during the Philippine-American war represents the United States. He holds a skinned bald eagle, America’s national emblem while riding a horse with the body of a human, whose appearance evokes that of a Filipino soldier dressed in the rayadillo. Meanwhile, a man on the right resembles Uncle Sam, the national personification of the US. He is seen holding the face of Inang Bayan, denoting the atrocious exploitation by America. The atomic bombs represent Imperial Japan and World War II.A dove, whose head and body are that of a broken eggshell, alludes to the fragility of the independence and sovereignty “granted” to us by the United States at the end of the war. Two dogs sharing a single body are seen running towards the figures of the American soldier and Uncle Sam. They symbolize how the Philippines has become continually subservient at the behest of American dominance and influence. In appropriating the title of Kipling’s poem, Torres engenders a powerful social commentary on the spectral brunt of centuries of foreign hegemony that the Filipino nation still bears to this day. (A.M.)