Quiapo
signed and dated 1996 (lower right)
oil on canvas
48" x 82" (122 cm x 208 cm)


PROVENANCE: Acquired directly from the artist
EXHIBITED: Cultural Center of the Philippines, Last Full Show: Danilo DalenaRetrospective, Manila, December 10, 2016 - March 4, 2017
LITERATURE: Cultural Center of the Philippines, Last Full Show: Danilo DalenaRetrospective (Exhibition Catalog). Manila: Cultural Center of thePhilippines, Danilo Dalena, and Dalena Research Initiative, 2018.Published following the exhibition of the same name at theCCP in 2016-17. Listed on page 36 as 'Quiapo' under theQuiapo Ilalim Series.

F rom late 2016 to early 2017, Danilo Dalena held a retrospective exhibit at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Titled Last Full Show, it was Dalena's first solo exhibition after almost two decades. The works in the exhibition showcase the most important works by the esteemed artist, spanning more than five decades, and represent Dalena's creative journey. On the fifth anniversary of the retrospective, Leon Gallery has the privilege of offering in this sale a piece from that comeback show—the largest of Dalena's works to enter the market. Titled Quiapo, the work's composition contrasts its straightforward title, for it is inarguably the most beautiful, intricate, and detailed of Dalena's paintings. Danilo Dalena's Quiapo paintings bear the hallmarks of what Alice Guillermo describes as "a quest for the symbols of the 'human condition.'" When the idea of the Quiapo paintings first struck Dalena in 1979, the country was severely suffering from the throes of hunger and poverty, caused by soaring prices of commodities, decreasing real wages, escalating foreign debt, and further exacerbated by the global oil crisis of that year, which greatly affected the country due to our semi-colonial and semi-feudal state. Among the subjects of the Quiapo paintings is the Filipinos' enduring devotion to the Black Nazarene, which Dalena strips of any hagiographic or excessively romantic undertones. Here, he depicts faith and devotion as an implicit yet powerful form of resistance. In the case of the work at hand, Dalena depicts a familiar annual tradition: the traslación of the Black Nazarene passing through the narrow and winding streets of Quiapo. Here, the image of the Black Nazarene blends with the wave of devotees. Through his powerful brushstroke, Dalena evokes the union of the divine and the mundane. It is as if God had become incarnate once more, descending from the heavens not as a redeemer but to partake in the tribulations of His people. The suffering Christ, from whom the devotees see their own suffering, becomes one and the same. Dalena's Quiapo is an image of a liberating Christianity—transforming the image of Christ from an imperial divine to a radical being persecuted by a despotic system. The masses' devotion to the Black Nazarene is more than just an expression of faith; it is a collective act of articulating their grievances toward an oppressive system and their continuing struggle for genuine liberation from the shackles of enslavement, thus manifesting strength in solidarity. As the andas of the Black Nazarene move throughout Quiapo, the city's entrenched trauma is revealed. Therefore, the piece also critiques society's ills; how the oppressed are left vulnerable in the face of the government's futility. The same conditions still prevail as when Dalena started his Quiapo paintings in 1979—the masses are exploited, the rich become richer, and the state remains subservient to the interests of the powerful. Yet, like the gradual movement of the Black Nazarene's andas, it becomes palpable that the power to instigate the flames of radical change lies in the hands of the oppressed. Karl Marx says: "Religion...is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions." The masses' propensity toward religion should not be seen as indifference to an inhumane system. In the face of crisis, they see and use religion as a powerful avenue for protest and resistance. (A.M.)