By KARLO ANTONIO GALAY DAVID

The eyes seem to dance and tumble in delight, one bigger than the other, in a vibrant panoply of produce. This is the unmistakeable work of Elviz Goloran, one of the top emerging artists from Tagum City in Davao del Norte whose work is starting to appear at galleries and art fairs all over the country. 

Elviz is one of many exciting artists to come out of Tagum City, which has recently had a culture and arts boom as its local government has been giving generous support to its local creatives. The local government has helped organize artists, conduct training, and offer space to showcase their artworks. Together many of these artists have since changed the Tagum landscape, filling it with colorful and often very contemporary art and begetting what could only be called Tagum Neopop. 

Elviz is one of the artists who have benefited from the city’s support, and he is one of the main movers in that movement. 

And the city has definitely earned back its investment on him—Tagum has won the inter-municipality booth-making competition during Davao del Norte’s Kadagayaan Festival every year since 2015. This is all thanks to Elviz, who started working as a visual artist and draftsman in residence for the city government since that year. 

MaTa mAtA: Elviz’s distinctly asymmetrical eyes 

But while he is better known in Tagum for his booths, to the rest of the country he is starting to be remembered for his colorful paintings in acrylic on canvas, which almost all feature his distinct characters with uneven eyes.

MaTa mAtA, it’s whimsically called, with typography that reflects the feature: one eye of each human or animal in his paintings is always larger than the other.

The style offers depth of perspective to his figures, who are made to appear slightly facing sideways because of the eyes. His paintings are always vibrant and his human figures child-like, and the style gives them an added dynamism and character. The characters look more fun and dynamic exactly because they're asymmetrical. They would not be as cheerful if their eyes were even.

On a more nuanced level, the uneven eyes encourage a heterogeneity of perspective—the world can be pretty if looked at from a balanced point of view, but it will be even more beautiful if seen from uneven eyes. 

Even more subtly, they create a sense of inclusivity, especially for those who are differently-abled. 

This emphasis on inclusivity is reinforced by Elviz’s choice of subject matter. His paintings often depict Mindanao’s cultural communities, and people working in the agricultural and fisheries sector. 

Elviz’s family background is as diverse as Mindanao, and in a part of it he traces descent from some of Davao’s indigenous peoples (the Mandaya and Tagabawa, as far as he could trace, but he is still digging deeper). His generation has been alienated from this heritage by coloniality, but his art has been a way for him to reconnect with his indigenous roots. Many of his paintings feature characters proudly wearing indigenous attire, from the Tangkulo of the Tagabawa to the Dagum of the Mandaya.

But a more dominant feature of his work is its depiction of agriculture. Elviz also happens to be a civil servant, having worked with farming and fishing communities. His art is also a way by which to process their experience, both to celebrate the beauty of their bounty (often ignored in an increasingly urbanized world) and a reflection into the realities of hardship and environmental degradation they have to overcome. 

Transmitting abundance 

One potent effect of this process is that his art has the project of channelling the verdant abundance of his subject matters unto the canvas. The ripeness of fruits, or the brimming life force of fish, almost leap in color from out of the frame and into the homes of the increasing number of collectors whose attention is being caught by the uniquely uneven eyes. 

Because Elviz is starting to gain wider attention as his work starts appearing at more fairs and galleries. After his debut at the Tagum City Historical and Cultural Center (where they still occasionally appear), they have since made a splash in Davao, where he has become a regular for Gallery Down South. Since 2019, his paintings have also been showstealers at Mindanao Art. Last year his paintings were hung and sold at Art Fair Philippines, and earlier this year he took part for the first time in the Visayas Art Fair in Cebu. The eyes on his paintings have also danced on the walls of Galerie du Soleil in Taguig and the Manila Clock Tower Museum in Manila City Hall.

The idea of using art to channel the life force of culture, nature, and hard work is a reflection of the guidance Elviz has received. 

Victor Dumaguing and Kublai Millan, two of Mindanao’s top artists, are Elviz’s key mentors. Together they helped Elviz cultivate his voice as artist, refine his style and technique, and introduce his work to a bigger audience. This writer owes his friendship with Elviz to these two mentors. 

Kublai is a particularly profound influence. The beady-eyed characters in his own “Probinsaya” series has been an important and acknowledged stylistic precursor to the MaTa mAtA style. But more crucially, it is Kublai’s own project to articulating in acrylic the beauty and positivity in art—“capturing the Mindanao breeze,” as I write elsewhere—that Elviz continues in his own project of transmitting abundance. 

Vic, Tagum’s top artist, has on the other hand kept him grounded to locale and discourse. One of Mindanao’s most intellectual artists, Vic’s paintings that offer critical scrutiny of Mindanao’s complex realities are behind some of Elviz’s own more intellectual work. 

His very symbolic pair of paintings, Buhay Magsasaka sa Makabagong Panahon, for instance, personify the earth as two child-like figures. One is depicted draped in life, to represent the teeming feel of the world in more rural times. The other has the figure wearing a skull over her head and surrounded with imagery of death, to show the decline brought about by urbanization. 

But perhaps his most critically intellectual work to date—his mural Imong Sala, Imong Sala, Imong Dakong Sala is also his most controversial. Depicting Christ with a skull and covered in reverent but edgy-looking details (such as tattoos and making hand gestures that at first glance look rude), the mural is both a memento mori and a reflection from the devoutly faithful artist on hypocrisy and the degradation of moral values.

While his vibrant and peaceful paintings are more popular, it is more critical and intellectual works of his like this that make Elviz an exciting artist. He is currently working on a solo show while attending to more and more commissions and finishing a large mural project for a museum in the making in Davao. He is also working on a new series, reimagining workers of the land and sea as heroes using his distinct style. 

By Elviz’s paintbrush, Tagum Neopop—and indeed Mindanao art—will have much in store for us in the coming years.