2 posts tagged “carlo tagal-lachenal”

     When I first heard the topic of this project, and how retelling relates to Philippine history, my mind defaulted to resistance. I simply Googled Philippine resistance and hits came up with the Katipunan. I decided that that would be the focal point of my drawing. After spending a little time drawing the Katipunan sun over and over again, I began to see a face emerge from the “ka” symbol located in the middle of the sun. I decided it looked a little like a disgruntled retail or service industry worker. So I searched again for another image, this time of a McDonald’s employee. An image of a Russian teenager standing outside of a McDonald’s store came up, and I thought that maybe intertwining both the image of the teenager in his drab manager’s suit and the image of the Katipunan sun would be ironic.

     I tried to make this look like “the new Katipunan flag”, because I wanted to show how the Philippines has not yet escaped its own colonial mentality. Anything American is the best, they say, and to be Filipino is a liability. I feel this is not right, and that to take such a sacred image, that being the Katipunan flag, and turning it into a symbol of servitude would show how much we have forgotten about our own past. Did the Katipunan fight simply to have their following generations be servants under another flag? Are we respecting the sacrifices they made when we choose to support American this and American that over our own peoples’ works?