By Jose Tence Ruiz

To those of us pummeled by those typhoon winds that blew away 20-odd years of dictatorship, the ecstasy and lingering anguish are somehow all that remain after 40 years, four decades rushing by in a mixed-up blur. The euphoria, the joy, the dopamine tsunami was palpable, but so was the unease. New options came forward, as did old questions: Was a popularly mechanized putsch actually going to renew the structure of Philippine Society, or was it just another unprecedented moment of upper-class realignment? Was the verdict of the millions of warm bodies of Metro Manila and Luzon in general going to ever sit well with the Visayans and Mindanao? Would the Philippines step up as a nation and be an exemplar for its ASEAN brothers, for a world ensconced by the Cold War in multiple dictatorships? Was People Power going to lift the economy, or just shift its exploitative parameters to another set of players, and the status quo would again settle, and the business of resurrecting a nation be returned to the hands of the class that had sucked it into destitute mediocrity?

History is said to be fickle, ambivalent, and subjective. But history is, at least, founded on the eyewitness, because those who have lived in the times can best recount and express them. The four artists of this gathering were all working in Manila during the fateful four days that expelled a moribund 20-year tyranny. They were all employed in journalism of one sort or another and were thus properly implicated in the unrequited miracle of 1986. That they have lived to this time where said miracle became a nasty, ironic joke on the reformers is even more touching, but also significant: To see your aspirations undone or reversed has to be both a mischievous trick of existence and a privilege of longevity. EDSA was a true zenith of joy, but also an undisputed moshpit of inchoate longing. Dengcoy Miel, Noel Rosales, Jose Tence Ruiz, and Pinggot Zulueta had both soared off into the rapture of social upheaval and endured the slow comeback of post-colonial torpor and recidivism. EDSA is both a fever dream and a tedious soap opera, and the works in this show bear testament to this gamut of enduring.

“Afterglow: EDSA 40 Years Later” is on view until March 21, 2026, at the vMEME Contemporary Art Gallery, Estancia Mall, Capitol Commons, Pasig City.