EXHIBITIONS
Polymer & Palm
Excerpts of the Tropikalye Index
Benilde Open
School of Design and Art
De La Salle—College of St. Benilde
2024
Tropikalye is an exercise in citizen-ethnography, its output currently structured as a co-learning resource on the vernacular material culture in present-day Philippines. The resource, an online index containing documentations of folk strategies that respond to tropical and postcolonial conditions, is continually updated through content aggregation and submissions from its public. A shared interest in the “accidental intersections of aesthetics and the everyday” guides the process of accumulating vernacular wisdom—and humor, as it happens—that is otherwise overlooked. This interest also defines our study of contemporary Philippine aesthetics as one conducted from the vantage point of the street, “street” being a signifier for the gray area between indigenous territories and spaces maintained by institutions. A portmanteau of the words “tropical” and the Tagalized Spanish “kalye”, the project implements a casual and convivial exchange of observations about the community by the community. Through this methodology, certain trends that arise from the index are mutually discovered, particularly our fondness for both the natural and the artificial, forming a basis for new vocabularies that express the socio-cultural significance of the vernacular.
Later in the same year, some key components of Polymer & Palm were restaged in DIAKALIN, a four-person exhibition with Nugie Rian (ID), Go Hung (HK) and Orange Terry (HK), curated by Nicole Nepomuceno (HK), at Square Street Gallery in Hong Kong. The introduction to the curatorial statement reads:
DI- / (action)
AKAL / mind
DIAKALIN
I need you to know that there are no museums of art in Bocaue, Bulacan. But there are hand-painted signs on every other wall warning people not to piss there (BAWAL UMIHI DITO!). And there are firecracker stalls with KWITIS! and EL DIABLO! and MABUHAY!—among other pyrotechnics in aggressively optimistic packaging—that greet you right as you enter the municipality from the highway. There used to live our neighbor who collected and resold broken glass (BUBOG!) by the sack. I don’t know who bought them. Of course, there is also my grandmother. She is still cutting our old underwear into new rags. These were the monuments to my everyday.
DI- / (行動)
AKAL / 思維
DIAKALIN
我需要你知道，在菲律賓布拉坎省博卡韦没有任何美術館。但是，在那裡的每一面墙上都有手绘的標語，警告人们禁止在此隨意小便（菲律賓語：BAWAL UMIHI DITO!）。在爆竹摊位上，那些包裝得極度精美的煙火之中，也有寫有「煙火!（菲律賓語： KWITIS! ）」、「魔鬼!（菲律賓語：EL DIABLO!）」和「万岁!（菲律賓語：MABUHAY!）」等字樣的標語——當你進入這個城市，這些是向你撲面而來的景象。在這裡，我們曾有一位鄰居，把在四處收集的破碎的玻璃瓶（菲律賓語：BUBOG!）裝進巨大的麻布袋再進行轉售。我並不知道誰會購買這些瓶子。当然，這座城市裡還住著我的外祖母，她至今仍在把我們的舊衣物剪碎當作抹布。這一切，都是我過往日常生活中的纪念碑。
Vernacular as in “ordinary” language, vernacular as in “commonly” understood. Vernacular as spoken, as everyday, as simple, as honest. Vernacular as street, vernacular as kalye.
民間方言——
民間方言意為「普通的」語言，意為「普遍」被理解的語言。民間方言是口語，是日常，是一種簡單，也是一種坦誠。方言是street（英語：街道，方言也是kalye（菲律賓語：街道）。
The seeds of this exhibition were sown in Manila. An online community index and mutual co-learning resource initiated by Manila-based artist Nice Buenaventura, Tropikalye went live as an Instagram page in 2018. It collects media—submitted voluntarily by the public—that documents what Nice describes as the “accidental intersections of aesthetics and the everyday in tropical and postcolonial Philippines.” In the index, there is an image of Mountain Dew bottles intricately cut up into spiraling floral decorations; a post of three paper plates refashioned into a bowl to hold fish balls; and many, many, many pictures of houses, churches, cars, and bars painted specific shades of green. As the index grows, it contextualizes and categorizes its content through hashtags:
本次展覽的種子最初是在馬尼拉種下的。2018年，《Tropikalye》在Instagram上正式上線，這是一個由住在馬尼拉的藝術家Nice Buenaventura發起的在線社區索引，也是一個共享的學習資源庫。《Tropikalye》持續收集人們自願提交的媒體內容，所記錄的內容被Nice描述為「一種在熱帶和後殖民菲律賓地區的日常生活中偶然相交的美學」。在這個索引中，有一張圖片展示了一個個Mountain Dew（飲料品牌）汽水瓶被精心切割成了螺旋狀的花朵裝飾；另一篇貼文的內容是三個紙盤被改制成用來裝魚丸的碗；此外，還有很多圖片，紀錄了被繪成某種特定綠色色調的房屋、教堂、汽車和酒吧等。隨著索引內容不斷豐富，這些貼文的內容和情境逐漸被hashtag（標籤）分為了以下三個種類：
#tkparaparaan for improvisation during a time of need;
#tkcolorcooling for painting structures green to alleviate heat;
#tkmoreismore, #tktarpicana, #tkchromax, #tkpublicprivate, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
#tkparaparaan: 在需要的時候即興創作；
#tkcolorcooling：為了緩解熱度而將建築物塗成綠色；
#tkmoreismore, #tktarpicana, #tkchromax, #tkpublicprivate：其它類別。
Tropikalye is, after all, about “creating new vocabularies for things not commonly articulated,” Nice expressed during a video call in June. The physical manifestation of the index for this exhibition is an excerpt of an excerpt shown recently at the exhibition “Polymer and Palm” at Benilde Open, Manila. It comprises images from the index, alongside Nice’s canvases of stretched table cloth and bedsheets carrying familiar patterns ubiquitous not only in many Filipino domiciles but beyond the archipelago. “Each visual and material curiosity filed in the index has a story of shared circumstance—in the Philippines, [Southeast Asia], and the tropics at large, often a circumstance of hardship and vulnerability . . . that can be traced back to the Western expansion taking a southbound turn. [M]any of our folk strategies are responses to scarce resources and extreme weather. If you check on Google Street View, the streets of SEA, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the rest of those too close to the equator, have uncanny similarities, beginning with #tkcolorcooling.” I knew I needed to bring them to Hong Kong.
畢竟，正如Nice在6月的一次視頻通話中所表達的那樣，《Tropikalye》是關於「為通常無法被表達的事物所創作新的詞彙」。在這次展覽中，對於網絡索引的實體呈現是藝術家最近在馬尼拉Benilde Open的展覽「聚合物與棕櫚」中展出作品的一個節選，由網絡索引中的部分圖像組成，同時還展出了Nice的布面作品。她把床單和窗簾繃在畫框上，呈現出讓人深感熟悉的圖案，這些圖案不僅出現在眾多菲律賓家庭中，而且幾乎遍佈了整個菲律賓群島。「在索引中紀錄的每一種令人好奇的視覺效果和材料都來來源它們共同的處境——在菲律賓群島（東南亞），或者說整個熱帶地區，這些處境通常是艱難和脆弱的......這種艱難與脆弱可以追溯到西方世
界向南擴張的歷史。我們[許多]在民間產生的策略都是對匱乏的資源和極端的天氣之應對。如果你去查看谷歌地圖中不同地區的街景，東南亞、拉丁美洲、加勒比海以及其餘靠近赤道的地區，街景都有一種令人不安的相似之處，就和#tkcolorcooling的開端一樣。」 那一刻我便知道，我需要把這些作品帶來香港。
