Baníg & Manggá
My mother told me that when she walked into this gallery, tears were brought to her eyes for one reason: she said she had never seen such a common household item displayed on the walls of a gallery in such a beautiful way.
Courtesy Silverlens New York, 2022
Silverlens’ gallery on Martha Atienza and Yee I-Lann’s work features a number of projects. These include a series of woven mats or baníg, videography on the waters of the Bantayan Islands, and a series of black and white photos telling the story of Yee I-Lann’s relationship with Southeast Asia’s various administrations. Martha Atienza is a Dutch-Filipino woman living in The Bantayan Islands, while Yee I-Lann is from Sabah, Malaysia. My mother and I were lucky enough to have the gallery further explained to us by Silverlens’ director, Katey Acquaro. She took us through the gallery and explained the significance of the mats as well as the images that they displayed.
The mats were intended to tell a story of the power language had on culture and family values. As we all know, the Philippines were colonized by the Spaniards. With that, many changes occurred economically, politically, and culturally. Filipino people were forced to adopt new gastronomy, a new religion, and of course, a new language. Their art works to highlights the impact of language on families within a community.
Courtesy Silverlens New York, 2022
Baníg was a very common household item, used for eating and sleeping, among other things. However, when the Spaniards came and tables were introduced, Filipinos were forced to bring this new language inside their own homes, a place of sanctuary, as there was no word in Tagalog for “table.” Suddenly, there was no sense of resistance or separation, and the inevitably of Spanish influence became reality. The table, a symbol of colonial rule, is raised off the ground, unlike the mat creating a symbolic hierarchy of cultures; she viewed this distinction as menacing. In Malaysia, she felt a part of her language, more so culture, was lost to colonialization, which is a feeling and issue many Southeast Asian families have. My mom and I remember my grandparents’ hoard-ish nature toward these mats. They were found scattered around, on top of tables, in cabinets, and hidden in between the fridge and the oven. But in this gallery, they were lit and decorative in an illustrious sense. For the first time, I saw these mats not in an inferior or useless way but for what it truly was, an art. Her mats act as a progression of this dissociation, showing the table depicted on the mat fade into abstraction. Devastatingly showing how traditional words and customs were neglected in the face of influence. For me, it showed the forcefulness of change inflicted on Filipinos within a place of intimate continuation. Everything around them became distant and unfamiliar, even within their own home. We often view colonization through a governmental lens; however, her art argues that the interpersonal and personal impacts were far greater.
However, Yee I-Lann’s photo essay touches more on the political sides of colonization. In her photos, she has people in various poses on or with mats, some containing other props such as office chairs and desks. These photos focus on how these objects conflict and coexist in the same space of the photo. She uses furniture as a metaphor for power dynamics. Similarly, she will contrast men in suits with women in traditional clothing and accessories so that the viewer can grasp the divide and tension between these two beings.
Courtesy Silverlens New York, 2022
“Mom rarely spoke Tagalog. She called it useless. In Fort Myers, a town of retirees and fishermen in Robert E. Lee County, Florida, it was. Mom had moved here to escape the poverty of the Manila slum where she grew up. She’d left her islands to become an island, a speck of brown adrift in a sea of the white and elderly.”
My Favorite photo of this series is one that centers around a mango tree against the backdrop of a dark cement wall. When I saw this photograph in the context of her other works, I instantly thought of a story I read about the importance of a mango tree to a Filipino immigrant family. The story, The Mango Missile Crisis, written by Annabelle Tometich, recounts the day that her mother, an immigrant from the Philippines, was arrested for shooting a man with a BB gun after she had watched him steal mangoes from her tree. The author’s intent was to help people empathize with her mother and to further explain the hardships that had led her mother to this moment. Tometich writes, “Mom rarely spoke Tagalog. She called it useless. In Fort Myers, a town of retirees and fishermen in Robert E. Lee County, Florida, it was. Mom had moved here to escape the poverty of the Manila slum where she grew up. She’d left her islands to become an island, a speck of brown adrift in a sea of the white and elderly.” Her mother felt like the other, isolated in a culture that she did not understand and that did not accept her. Someone who viewed this arrest with emotions aside, would question the significance of a mango tree, and why someone would be so compelled as to risk their freedom for it. After reading this story, it was clear.
Her mango tree was not just a plant adorning her backyard, it was a reminder of home. It was a beacon of familiarity in a sea of the unrecognizable. Similar to Yee I-Lann’s mats. Tometich realized that to her, this act of anger was almost justified. She regretted her reluctance to understand her mother, as she knows now that this hesitance only worsened things, “I want to go back to that thirteen-year-old dodging the projectiles, if only to tell her things will get better. I want to hug her the way her mother rarely did. I want her to be a kid and wish for kid things: world peace, ponies, love notes from crushes. Or maybe just a lightweight jean jacket suited to winters in Florida.” Going back to the photograph, this vine from a mango tree reminded me of Annabelle Tometich’s mother, pinned against a cement wall: the solidity of American culture.
This gallery successfully invoked many emotions within my mother. Growing up in an unfamiliar place where society is constantly telling you that your methods and treasures are useless, it is important to push back in order to preserve tradition, but also a sense of gratitude. We realized that we do not have to deem something beneath us just because the people around us do not see it in the same way. Whether it be a mat or a mango tree, it is important for the Asian-American community to hold memories of their past with them. By learning more about the significance of these memories, it will become easier to connect and appreciate someone else’s history and why they may feel the way that they do about change.
Photos courtesy Silverlens New York, 2022
Tometich, Annabelle. “The Mango Missile Crisis: Annabelle Tometich.” Catapult. November 23, 2021.
