Bayanihan finds room at Venice Biennale 2021

The Philippine answer to ‘How Will We Live Together,’ the theme of this year’s exhibition theme

In the curatorial statement of Sudarshan V. Khadka Jr. and Alexander Eriksson Furunes for this year’s Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the word building “refers to an activity that requires the mobilization of immense effort and resources directed toward achieving a common goal. It is necessarily a political act. The creation of architecture is a critical process of resolving the structures of power and negotiating its exercise.”

This year’s exhibition, which runs until November 2021, opened last Thursday at the Philippine Pavilion, alongside other national pavilions at Arsenale in Venice, such as those of Argentina, China, Italy, Malta, Peru, South Africa, and Turkey.

This run of arguably the most prestigious contemporary art exhibition in the world is a bold statement of hope. It has been postponed twice due to COVID-19, once from May 2020 to July 2020, during which Italy had sadly been one of the countries worst hit by the outbreak, and again, from July 2020 to this month, May 22, 2021, under a theme most appropriate under these pandemic circumstances, “How Will We Live Together?”

More than a bold move, however, the decision to hold a physical exhibition of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale is a great show of “perseverance and optimism,” as its curator, Lebanese scholar, educator, and architect Hashim Sarkis, put it at last Thursday’s opening ceremonies, held physically at Giardini, Arsenale, and in the city center of Venice, with all the COVID-19 safety precautions in place, and live streamed on Zoom around the world, 2:30 p.m. in Italy and 7:30 p.m. in the Philippines. “These discussions have been very enriching,” explained Sarkis. “They turned the biennale from an event into an experiment, a process, an open discussion, and a true collaboration in the spirit of the theme. The expanded and inclusive platform would not have been possible had we not paused this past year. As difficult as it may have been, it was also a year that we gained.”

These traditions are fading away in modern day society where the currency of wealth is measured by money rather than relationships built in a community. Thus, re-evaluating and reviving mutual support traditions provides an alternative way to consider the values, resources, and knowledge that shape our built environment.

The Philippine participation, under curators Khadka and Furunes of Framework Collaborative, expounds on the theme, with its focus on “Structures of Mutual Support,” which examines how architecture is shaped as much by physical and spatial considerations as by the need of the community to come together to confront challenges—this pandemic, for example, or even the changing of the seasons, natural disasters, crime and conflict, etc.—as well as to equitably share resources or to make such resources available through a system that, in its ideal state, must benefit all.

There’s more to the space in which a community dwells than wood, glass, and concrete, not to mention nipa, thatch, bamboo, and other building materials. The more essential component of such a space is what it houses—the people and the disparities and connections between them, their notions of what is important in life, their needs and wants, their hopes and dreams, their fears, everything they share in common as well as the differences they should settle as a collective.

The Philippine Pavilion’s interpretation of the biennale’s overall theme is succinctly framed as “Structures of Mutual Support,” an exploration of mutual support as “a mechanism of self-organization and collaboration by which communities support each other, especially in the event of adversity.”

Looking closely into the ties that bind a group of people sharing spaces as neighbors, the curators and their team drew heavily on communal work or community spirit as exemplified in cultures across the world, whether the task at hand is harvesting crops (meithal in Ireland), outdoor spring cleaning (dugnad in Norway), or repainting a schoolhouse or cleaning the park (mutirão in Brazil). Communal work is present in many more cultures—imece in Turkey, the name given to the collaboration of the townsfolk on such tasks as building a house for newlyweds in their towns or gadugi in North America, a Cherokee term for working together on community projects such as growing or tending gardens for the elderly or infirm members of the tribe.

In their critical examination of the “Structures of Mutual Support,” the curatorial team behind our national pavilion in Venice puts the Philippine version of this team spirit—the bayanihan—into a global context. Like the Indonesian gotong-royong, bayanihan is a celebrated community trait best exemplified by neighbors helping one another build or move houses. There is no better expression of the community spirit as the members of the community literally carrying a house on their shoulders to move it from one spot to the next, often from one village to another, sometimes even across vast fields or rivers.

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Khadka and Furunes, together with members of the Philippine Pavilion coordinating committee, began preparations for the exhibition by conducting a 22-day workshop in Barangay Encanto in Angat, Bulacan, in which participated farmers, carpenters, and other laborers, as well as housewives and students, all representing the Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm community. Based on conclusions arrived at as a result of this workshop, in which the common needs of the community were established, the team decided to plan, design, and build a library and conflict-resolution space in the barangay.

This is how the curatorial team explained the process behind the exhibition: “The output of these workshops were two structures that were sited close to the community’s homes and adjacent to a basketball court as well as an open field where the residents sometimes hold celebrations or sports activities. One was conceived as a more private and safe community library which would also double as a conflict-mediation space. The second was developed as a more open and lively ‘tambayan’ or space where the youth could relax and hang out with friends… The materials were all sourced locally, and the workers were all from the community and nearby villages. After getting the primary structure up, the library was dismantled and then shipped to Venice, Italy to become the centerpiece of the exhibition where the secondary elements were finished.” 

To make its architectural point, “Structures of Mutual Support” let the very spirit of bayanihan come into play as the building, upon completion in Angat, Bulacan, has traveled to Venice. It will stay there for the duration of the six-month biennale and, soon after November 2021, once the biennale has run its course, make its way back home to Bulacan.    

“We believe in the relevance of the conversation our exhibition is raising. More than ever, we need to revisit how traditions of mutual support systems, such as bayanihan, have allowed us to create societies that are equitable and able to survive seemingly insurmountable circumstances such as the one we face today,” said Khadka. 

“Collaborative traditions, largely in rural parts of the world, have offered a different perspective on how to get things done and how to decide what needs to be done,” added Furunes. “There is value in looking at these traditions and seeing how they can be applied during these times.” 

May this exhibition move us to take a closer look at the cities and towns and villages we have built and see how they reflect the very best of us and, if we wish to be a better society, also the very worst of us. If the built environment says that much about the people who live in it, what do cities like Manila say about who we are? 

The Philippine participation in Venice is a project of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Office of Deputy Speaker and Congresswoman Loren Legarda. Follow updates on Facebook and Instagram via @philartsvenice. philartsvenicebiennale.org

Watch video documentaries on the exhibition on the Philippine Arts in Venice Biennale (PAVB) YouTube account.