PROPERTY FROM THE GEORGE SISON COLLECTION

Sarimanok
signed and dated 1996 (lower right)
oil on canvas
36”x 48” (91 cm x 122 cm)

Provenance:
Acquired directly from the artist

Abdul Mari Imao explored the magnificence of the southern groups in his own contemporary idiom, even combining ornament and calligraphy, even creating sculptural variations of the name of Allah. Pursuing graduate studies, Imao won the Smith-Fulbright and Kansas University scholarships for his master’s degree in Sculpture, Major in Brass Casting.

Next, he was a ceramics and photography scholar at the Rhode Island School of Design. He also won a film directing scholarship from the faculty of Columbia University. At the director’s office at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, his bas-relief piece “South Pacific” was on display for two years. It was the museum director who made it possible for Imao to receive a grant normally given only to American citizens — one that allowed him to travel to Europe where he gained exposure to art in Scandinavia, Belgium, England, France, Germany, Holland and Switzerland.

In an interview with Nick Joaquin in 1969, Imao said: “I think the woodcraft and smooth lines of Scandinavian design have influenced me greatly. They are among the best designers in ceramics”.

But he disclosed to Joaquin his chosen idiom: “I have been working on the Sarimanok style. This is a design I am trying to improve, revitalize. That is why I have been doing research on this Muslim motif: to develop it into another design which will be distinctively Muslim”.

Although a Tausug, Imao loved and adapted in his art the vividly colored motifs common among the Lumad of Mindanao.

He also became noted for his Islamic calligraphy; the Sari-mosque or the gourd-like dome with crescent moon and cross that often appeared in his depictions of the Sarimanok with the staple fish in its beak; the serpent or naga, and okir or ukkil, the undulating carvings that served as embellishments to the Mindanao architecture.