Pinto Art Museum mounts exhibit to commemorate and challenge the first circumnavigation on its 500th anniversary
In September 1521, in a fleet of five ships and 270 men called the Armada de Maluco, Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Spain to discover a westward route across the world in search of spices. It has been half a millennium since that voyage reshaped world trade and our idea of the size and shape of our world.
Since March 2021, 500 years later, there have been many activities constituting a global commemoration of this first circumnavigation, which opened up what Portugal considers “the Magellan Route,” a Portuguese feat, Magellan being Portuguese, and which Spain considers its own, even if it has all these years been credited mainly to a Portuguese explorer, not only because it was sponsored and financed by King Charles I, but more because, Magellan only made half the trip—He was killed in the Philippines—and it was Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano who made it back to Spain, completing the voyage from Spain to the east and back. In fact, as the argument goes, it was Elcano, not Magellan, who first circumnavigated the world.
Regardless of who gets the credit, the first circumnavigation was a milestone in world history, especially in the Philippines, which was both a victor and a victim in that chance encounter.
On May 30, 2021, in response to nuances of the commemoration of this first single voyage of global circumnavigation, Pinto Art Museum is mounting the exhibition “A History of Struggle: Philippine Art Remembers 1521.”Curated by Patrick Flores, it is a remembrance, reflection, and reexamination of 1521 through the lens of contemporary arts, featuring works by leading Filipino contemporary artists and their view of such events, both local and global, as Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage, the triumph of Lapu-Lapu, and the first Catholic mass.
As a collective, the exhibition is rife with social criticism, allegory, counter-history, alternative mythology, and other visual strategies that combine historical revisits with creative or imaginative projections, rooting speculations in facts and injecting authenticated chronicles with fantasy.
As the promotional material puts it, “The exhibition rethinks ideas of discovery, conquest, and conversion in light of the meeting between the Spanish fleet of Magellan and the valiant inhabitants of the Visayas.
The interpretations are as diverse as the lineup of artists. As a result, the exhibition is a branching out of myriad possibilities from a single source, so many narrative variations from one set of events.
Imelda Cajipe-Endaya’s work weaves a “pro-Malay prehistory” into accounts of the Christianization of the Philippines, harking back to the Srivijaya and Madjapahit era, when missionaries sailed along with traders, peddling their articles of faith along with the goods of the latter.
Lee Paje’s Escape from the Ceremony of Wearing Skin, oil on copper, writes “an alternative myth of the first encounter of our ancestors with the colonizers,” which, judging from the title of her work, examines rectitude, virtue, morality, maybe even purity and modesty, as imposed by the encounter, and, as Pinto Art Museum asserts, with what “shaped the patriarchal society we live in today.”
The exhibition threads through simultaneously local and global events such as Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage, the triumph of Lapu-Lapu, and the first Catholic mass.
Norberto Roldan’s highlights the idea of distance, not only in terms of the geographical vastness as well as the cultural divide crossed by Magellan’s expedition but also the distance between “colonial faith and the indigenous belief system.”
Some works, according to Pinto Art Musem, “reconfigure the intellectual framework from which this history is seen.” Kidlat Tahimik puts the spotlight on Enrique de Malacca, Magellan’s Malay slave, who served as translator, particularly between Magellan and Rajah Humabon, when the expedition reached the Philippines. In his work, this slave—some call him Henry and some believe he was brought in by Luzon traders to what might pass as a trade fair in Malacca, where Magellan bought him—is the true star of the circumnavigation, especially when seen from our eyes or those of every Southeast Asian.
Iggy Rodriguez paints the fleet of arriving Spaniards as an ominous presence on the vast seas surrounding the archipelago, literally like ghost ships or like prophecies or biblical warnings, especially as he titled his work Thy Kingdom Come.
In Renz Baluyot’s work, the same vastness, that watery gates through which the enemy found its way to Homonhon, an island on the east side of Leyte Gulf, becomes the inaugural scene of a protracted struggle.
Dex Fernandez creates a “hybrid sacred monster,” born out of the conquest 500 years ago, which leaves a lasting mark, inhabits the soul of every Catholic Filipino, whereas Ernest Concepcion brings into that history of conquest shamans and celestial god-beings, as well as parallel earths.
When Magellan set out to discover a new path to the east by going west, thereby proving that the earth was round, he made history, though Elcano completed his journey in behalf of the Spanish King who invested in the venture.
FLEE THE FLESH Escape from the Ceremony of Wearing Skin, oil on copper, 5’ x 3’, by Lee Paje 
SURREALIST PORTRAIT One of Kawayan de Guia’s portraits of indigenous figures in museological settings
It’s been 500 years, but it isn’t all in the past. The journey goes on, unearthing as many new facts, new discoveries, new possibilities as can be unearthed through changing mindsets, widening perspectives, maturing geo-political sensibilities, and artistic imagination.
This Pinto Art Museum project, curated by Patrick Flores, provides multiple lenses with which to view this historic exhibit. Other participating artists in “A History of Struggle: Philippine Art Remembers 1521” are Ambie Abaño, Alfredo Esquillo, Allan Balisi, Antipas Delotavo, Anton Del Castillo, Arturo Sanchez, Jr., Charlie Co, Dexter Sy, Doktor Karayom, Emmanuel Garibay, Julie Lluch, Kawayan De Guia, Leeroy New, Leonard Aguinaldo, Marcel Antonio, Paolo Icasas, Roberto Feleo, Rodel Tapaya, Rodney Yap, Romulo Galicano, Ronson Culibrina, and Victor Balanon.
The exhibition will close on Aug. 8, 2021.
An exhibition space and a contemporary art museum, Pinto Art Museum is at 1 Sierra Madre St, Grand Heights Subdivision, Antipolo, 1870 Rizal. www.pintoart.org