The latest Swatch Art Special watch, designed by Filipino artist José Santos III, is a celebration of grit or what it takes to survive and then to thrive in a life marked by challenges
It took a lot of time to bring out the latest of Swatch’s Art Special watches, a collaboration with world-renowned Filipino contemporary artist and multi-media visualist José Santos III. Originally intended for the 30th anniversary of Swatch in the Philippines in 2019, it has been released just now, just last week, delayed as it was by a series of events, including this ongoing pandemic.
The Swatch Art Special, launched in 1985, is a program that commissions popular artists from the world over to create watches that capture their personal aesthetics and design philosophies. With this latest release from Swatch, our very own José Santos III joins the likes of French artist, graphic designer, and filmmaker Christian Chapiron, otherwise known as Kiki Picasso, New York graffiti-style pop artist Keith Haring, and Italian painter and sculptor Mimmo Paladino, whose artistic signature has found a new expression in a Swatch.
More than two years in the making, due for the most part to justifiable delays, the Swatch x José Santos III collaboration has been released since end of September in the Philippines and in over 80 countries around the world. You might say that the confluence of events, many of which camouflaged themselves as challenges or setbacks, arranged for the watch, inspired by Santos’ large scale two-panel artwork “Crossing Over Yellow and Black Lines,” to be released with perfect timing.
And no time is more perfect for the message of the watch than now when, emerging cautiously from almost two years of a world crisis never before experienced by anyone alive today, we are all in the process of rebuilding, reconstruction, and reclaiming life as we used to live it—with freedom, with movement, but this time also with more care and thoughtfulness. Of all Swatch Art Special releases since 1985, this watch also happens to be the first ever to use the revolutionary, eco-innovative Bioceramic, a Swatch patent that is a big leap toward environmental consciousness.
This year, the 32nd year of Swatch in the Philippines, is also a milestone year for the country. It is the year we won our first Olympic gold in 97 years, a historic accomplishment for weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, a Swatch ambassador, but also for the Filipino people.
‘Crossing Over Yellow and Black Lines,’ the philosophical prompt for this functional, wearable objet d’art, is an artistic representation of surmounting obstacles, meeting challenges head on, and creating opportunities out of life’s inevitable mess, muddle, and mix-ups.
To the watch creator, Hidilyn is the very personification of “Crossing Over Yellow and Black Lines,” a landmark piece from a collection Santos built around the idea of the distance between two points, such as the present and the future, and the many barriers that exist within that distance.
“The painting from which I drew inspiration for the watch is about overcoming barriers,” says Santos. “Hidilyn must have overcome countless barriers to reach where she is today.”
Just as the watch is a metaphor for the struggles, known and unknown, that Hidilyn underwent in pursuit of gold, the pinnacle of her dreams as an athlete, so is Hidilyn a metaphor for the highest achievement possible for the Filipino people for whom her victory provides an inspiration, sets an example, raises the bar for aspirations, and proves that hard work, resilience, discipline, and suffering for a cause ultimately pays off.
In its very design, the highly collectible Swatch x José Santos III Bioceramic Art Special watch is a celebration of grit, a word that, in connection to the watch, means small, loose particles of stone and sand and, also again in connection to the watch, means courage and great resolve. Inspired by the road or a runway surfaced with tarmac or crushed rock mixed with tar, it does by design look gritty, even dusty, as if timeworn, which is also why the watch comes with a pair of work gloves as a symbol for mechanical hazards, such as abrasion, cuts, tears, and punctures, which, in turn, are symbols of what it takes first to survive and then to thrive in this life marked by challenges.
“Crossing Over Yellow and Black Lines,” the philosophical as well as creative prompt for this work of art that has found a new form as a timepiece, a functional, wearable, affordable objet d’art, is an artistic representation of surmounting obstacles, meeting challenges head on, creating opportunities out of life’s inevitable mess, muddle, and mix-ups, breaking through barricades, pushing boundaries, going beyond limits.
The message of this latest Swatch Art Special piece, according to Virgie Ramos, Swatch Philippines president, applies to everyone. “It’s relatable to every person,” she says. And maybe that is why the Swatch was sold out in Manila as soon as it was released and the Manila office had to order a new batch from the headquarters in Biel, Switzerland ahead of schedule to keep up with the demand.
The Swatch x José Santos III Bioceramic Art Special watch does resonate with us about our own personal struggles as well as our own successes. Since its release, it has been seen on the wrist of a cross-section of Philippine society, from athletes to artists, celebrities, builders, and movers and shakers, who wear it as a badge of honor, maybe even as a battle scar, and as a reminder that in the distance between point A and point B—A being where we are and B being where we wish to go, there is, in the words of the watch designer, “elapsed time,” and time elapsed represents all the obstacles, the barriers, the impediments, without which our successes and arrivals will have no meaning.