The Last Supper(s)
Here are 13 different Filipinx artists and writers throwing down with The Last Supper painting. We are altar boys, sunday school teachers, former evangelists. We were raised Roman Catholic, Baptist, Church of Christ, Opus Dei. We gathered together one evening. We were hungry together and we decided we would make something of it.
Here are our Last Supper(s).
Walang Hiya: Telling a Filipino, Walang hiya is equivalent to a "F*** you." The transliteration, "You have no shame" speaks to the long-lasting residue of colonization. Walang hiya traditionally implies one is mannerless, disrespectful, inelegant, lowbred, barbaric, unrefined, and unlike the colonizers and the properly colonized, primitive. Untraditionally, it embraces that Walang Hiya is necessary to provoke great art, social change, and fly outfits. ~ Hossannah Asuncion
Pagpahayag Ng Mga Gutom: My interpretation combines elements from the Last Supper and the Philippine Declaration of Independence (Pagpapahayag ng Kasarinlan ng Pilipinas) in 1898. Both events have elements of political strife, betrayal, and are omnipresent in the Pilipino home. ~ Francis Estrada
give over: in my evangelical church / women did not speak out / in the assembly / no one drank beer / wine / liquor / i signed a virginity contract / Wait For Me / love (comma) / Your Future Husband / my brown family was hired / as church janitors / i memorized chapters of the / king james / ye shall seek me / and find me / when ye shall / search for me / with all your heart / we had access to the church empty / i was wiping tables / putting away playdoh / and gnawed on / nursery toys / the felt pictures of jesus / i hung oblong things / on christmas trees / i wanted to be sideswiped / into pipe organ traffic / i still want this / to feel hair-pulled / and to give over / at the same time / i could / switch off every light / in the grand auditorium / i made it happen / the echoing green / of an deserted church / piano keys are / lonelier / and lovelier /////////////////////// here / ~ Sarah Gambito
Anger, Ambivalence, Ennui: In this photo, I was interested in exploring the many attitudes of non-believers and ex-believers. I was raised in the Catholic Church. Even as I was growing up, taking CCD classes, learning the rituals of confession and First Communion, and serving as an altar boy every Sunday, I felt an ambivalence and good-winking even as a young child. When I was older and made peace with my non-belief in church doctrine and a monotheistic, patriarchal institution, my attitudes toward the Catholic Church range from anger and ambivalence to frustration and ennui. Often, all at the same time. In this staging, I distributed an index card with one emotion written on it to each of the 12 models. The range of emotions included these feelings of anger and ambivalence, as well as others such as boredom, irritation, and ignorance. I asked the 12 models to embody the individual emotion described without feedback from others. The feeling I sought for the portrait as a whole was being together alone. ~ Ricco Siasoco
Bubble Gum For Supper: I was struck by how we had all come together to activate artistic play. That's what this photoshoot of the Last Supper was for us Filipino artists and creators - playing with image and form, with story and with myth, and subverting religious iconography with ephemeral notes of pop-culture. ~ Marissa Aroy
Blood & Wine: For me, the Last Supper image is a beginning of an end. And it evokes red to me: blood & wine. I shredded the reddest fabric I could find and distributed them to the participants to depict violence, trauma, death and the ultimate betrayal that is to come. ~ Joseph O. Legaspi
Compassion Fatigue: Everyone in this photo is distracted by their devices and not making eye contact with each other even when in close proximity. I was thinking about self-imposed distraction in the face of the real. ~ Roberto Jamora
An Absence of Patriarchy: In the dream it never washed ashore never sunk its talons deep into the veins to become Lord—Father and Son and father and son and. / & so we continued beginning with the stories, all the simple things we know, hard-won and breakable, passed gentle as eggs from knowing hands. / & the question was not who are we but how do we do & the heft of it & for whom & what we learned in the doing. / & in the doing there was not loneliness but communion: long-memoried elders and the earnest with radical vision, bound up together, forging where else but ahead. / & despite the guarantee of change—how it breaks hearts—in the dream the world is held open, / & in the dream we inherit our abundance, / & in the dream always there is room for the young, their nerve, their gum-snapping, arm-linking, one-upping sisterfriends and playcousins, the spitfires and quiet stars, the tsismis, the affection, the maarte, the magulo, & all the beginnings of the stories left in tact, all the boys and all the girls left unpurged of their girlishness, incandescent, sugar-high and twirling in the dusk, running late for supper. ~Noelle de la Paz
OMG: To correlate the present and our particular political climate to The Last Supper, brings up feelings of a time and place before the end. Our selfie culture reflecting nothing back at us but our inability to break out of what feels like a predestined doom. ~ Nancy Bulalacao
Magboiboisterous: This was a very special evening. In my arrangement, I'm Judas. I didn't want to be, but I thought it added another layer to have the biracial person be Judas. I had to do it. I thought everyone would have heard that the Book of Judas had been found, and so Judas' role is ambiguous because in his book, Christ asks him to do it, and so he sacrifices his name in history for Christ. But few had heard of this, and so I realized that I was not creating Judas who-might-be-a hero-or-a-betrayer, I was creating more Judas a betrayer. But ironically this crowd is the most loving group, we feel lucky to have each other. If everyone had friends like we do, there would be a lot less misery in the NYC arts scene. ~ Lara Stapleton
A Celebration of Life (or This is NOT Our Last Supper): I wanted to reflect the idea of coming together at the table to celebrate life a la Oprah with wide grins and serious merriment. ~ Nita Noveno
The Sacrifice: Jesus as sacrificial lamb / Jesus as a female figure / sacrifice / Disciples as a mob/boxing matchviolent, greedy, blood-hungry ~ J. Mae Barizo
Last Chance at the CCP: He that is without sin among you ~ Nicole Ponseca
Photo Credit: Margarita Corporan
contributors
Marissa Aroy has worked in all aspects of documentary production for the last 11 years. She received an Emmy for the documentary “Sikhs in America,” which she produced and directed. Last year, Aroy was awarded a Fulbright to film a narrative in the Philippines. She is currently producing, directing and editing a PBS program on Filipino American history. In 2008, Aroy directed the educational soap opera series “Grand Cafe.” She produced and directed “Little Manila,” for PBS and produced “Sounds of Hope” shown on Frontline World. She was named, “One of the Most Influential Filipina Women in the US” by the Filipina Women’s Network.
Hossannah Asuncion grew up near the 710 and 105 freeways in Los Angeles. She currently lives near an A/C line in Brooklyn. She writes and teaches in New York.
J. Mae Barizo is the author of The Cumulus Effect (Four Way Books, 2015). A prize-winning poet, critic, and performer, recent work appears in AGNI, Bookforum, Boston Review, Hyperallergic, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from Bennington College, the New School, the Jerome Foundation, and Poets House. Recent collaborative work includes projects with artists such as Salman Rushdie, Mark Morris, and the American String Quartet. She lives in New York City.
Nancy Bulalacao creates and curates cultural public programs.
Born in the Philippines and currently residing in Brooklyn, Francis Estrada is a visual artist, museum educator at the Museum of Modern Art, and freelance educator of Filipino art and culture. Francis has a fine arts degree in painting and drawing from San Jose State University, and he has taught in a variety of studio, classroom, and museum settings to diverse audiences, including programs for adults with disabilities, cultural institutions, and after-school programs. He was also an administrator and educator at the Museum for African Art, where he enjoyed teaching about the amalgamation of art and culture through objects. Francis exhibits his work nationally, including online publications. His work focuses on culture, history, and perception.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Noelle de la Paz now assembles words, art, and food in her magic lab in Queens. Much of her work explores girlness, brownness, languaging, and movements across borders, real and imagined.
Sarah Gambito is the author of the poetry collections Delivered (Persea Books) and Matadora (Alice James Books). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, POETRY, Harvard Review, American Poetry Review, The New Republic and other journals. She is co-founder of Kundiman, a non-profit organization dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian American literature.
Roberto Jamora is a Brooklyn-based artist. He is working on two series of abstract paintings: one that investigates how color triggers memory and another that deals with systems in sports. He holds a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA in Visual Arts from Purchase College, State University of New York (SUNY). He was an Emerging Artist-Teacher Fellow at Joan Mitchell Foundation and also taught at Purchase College, SUNY. In Fall 2017, he was an Artist-in-Residence at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. Previously, he has participated in artist residencies at Ragdale and Sambalikhaan. His work has been exhibited at Scott Charmin Gallery, Fouladi Projects, The Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelly Foundation, Open Space, Outlet Fine Art, ArtHelix, and Shockoe Artspace. For further information, contact robertojamora@gmail.com or visit robertojamora.com.
Joseph O. Legaspi, a Fulbright and NYFA fellow, is the author of the poetry collections Threshold and Imago, both from CavanKerry Press; and two chapbooks, Aviary, Bestiary (Organic Weapon Arts), and Subways (Thrush Press). His works have appeared in POETRY, New England Review, Best of the Net, Orion, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. He co-founded Kundiman (www.kundiman.org), a nonprofit organization serving Asian American literature. He lives in Queens, New York.
As a child, Nita Noveno dreamed of becoming a veterinarian and an Olympic figure skater. Today she is a writer of fragments and run-on sentences.
Nicole Ponseca owns two restaurants and has a cookbook coming out in 2018. Some people like what she does, some don't.
Ricco Villanueva Siasoco has published stories and essays in AGNI, Joyland, Post Road, The North American Review, and numerous anthologies including Walang Hiya (Carayan Press, 2010) and Screaming Monkeys (Coffee House Press, 2003). In 2013, he was selected as a NYC Emerging Writer Fellow from The Center for Fiction. Ricco received his MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and has taught at Columbia University, Boston College, and the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. Currently, he is completing a PhD from Teachers College, Columbia University and is a board member of Kundiman, a nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature.
Lara Stapleton was born and raised in East Lansing, Michigan. Her mother and extended family are from the Philippines. New York City is her home. She is the author of THE LOWEST BLUE FLAME BEFORE NOTHING, a Pen Open Book Committee Selection and an Independent Booksellers' Selection. Her stories, poems and essays have been published in dozens of periodicals including the LA Review of Books, Glimmer Train, and the Alaska Quarterly Review. She is currently at work with producer Rachel Watanabe-Batton on 1850, an episodic series set in New Orleans before the Civil War.