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A feature-length documentary on famed Negrense painter Nunelucio Alvarado will have its world premiere on Saturday, September 11, at the Safe House theater in Bacolod’s Art District.
“Kalibutan ni Nunelucio Alvarado” is directed by the artist’s daughter-in-law, Candy Nagrampa, who produced it with the Visayan Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference (VIVA EXCON) and the Orange Project Gallery.
Kalibutan, the Ilonggo word for world, is also the theme of the VIVA EXCON biennial that started in November 202.
Nagrampa said she originally planned to do a 10-minute film. She was “triggered” by a plaintive comment made by Alvarado – famous for his bold portrayals of sugar workers, fisherfolk, and vendors – during his 71st birthday.
“Daw na limtan na ko sa gwa,” Alvarado said of the lack of visitors outside of his immediate family. (I think the world has forgotten me.)
“What do you mean you’ve been forgotten?” Nagrampa asked. “I told him he was loved, but that we were in the middle of a pandemic and nobody was doing personal travel,” she told Rappler.
“Sometimes he’s not in the best condition in terms of memory,” said Nagrampa. Alvarado’s works still commanded six-figure price tags in a 2020 art auction, but since the artist is not a digital native, he chafed at the social isolation.
Alvarado’s beachfront home, cafe and gallery in Margaha Beach, Old Sagay, Sagay City, had hosted in pre-pandemic years a non-stop parade of students, artists of all ages and stature, collectors, journalists, and curious tourists.
Aside from the film’s premiere, VIVA EXCON is also holding an exhibit of Alvarado’s work, including his recent collaboration with fellow Negrense painter Charlie Co.
The Orange Project has also cleaned and repaired some of Alvarado’s paintings. Funds raised will go to environmental projects in the artist’s home community.
Alvarado broke into the Philippine capital’s art scene in the late 1960s, becoming famous for paintings that art critic Alice Guillermo described as “fraught with dark shadows and sinister presences against passages of blazing light in a harsh landscape.”
Nagrampa, an assistant director in films and television series, planned to gift him with a short film that could be shared on social media.
“Let people see what your world is now. Let them see how you remain productive during the pandemic,” she told Alvarado. She envisioned it as a conversation draw for friends and admirers, with a grandson helping the artist in the expected exchanges of memories and ideas.
But she got an unexpected boost from Manny Montelibano and Co, key movers of the VIVA EXCON, whose 16th biennial rolled out in Negros Occidental amid the pandemic.
After watching a 1-minute and 40-second trailer, VIVA EXCON and the Orange Project gallery, where Co is part-owner, offered her logistics and funding to expand her 10-minute project into a full documentary.
The film shows Alvarado as an environmentalist and passionate teacher of his craft, while neighbors narrate how he has helped wean young people from vices by offering them art lessons that have allowed them to express their dreams.
As a result of the artist’s outreach, communities around Alvarado’s base have walls, posts, even roofs ablaze in a riot of colors.
The tribute to Alvarado is part of a series of exhibits that fêtes “artists from the province of Negros Occidental who have enriched the cultural field of the Visayas and beyond.”
“Kalibutan: The World in Mind” launched in November 2020 and will unfold incrementally in modular form until July 2021. Its chief curator is Patrick Flores, who directed the 2019 Singapore Biennale 2019 and will curate the Taipei Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022. Six collaborators across the Visayas helped curate the VIVA EXCON biennial.
Alvarado graduated in 1968 with an advertising degree from La Consolacion College School of Architecture and Fine Arts in Bacolod City. He went to Manila to pursue Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines the following year as a scholar of Purita Kalaw-Ledesma.
That put him smack in a restive student movement that would soon be known as The First Quarter Storm. Alvarado became an active member of the activist Nagkakaisang Progresibong Arkitekto at Artista (NPAA) and became chairperson of the organization’s Western Visayas chapter soon after.
After Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law, Alvarado joined Kaisahan, a group of activist painters. When he returned to Bacolod, he co-founded the social-realist collective Pamily Pintura in 1980.
He also became president of the Art Association of Bacolod and was one of the founding members of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines-Negros in 1983. In 1987 he joined the artist collective Black Artists of Asia.
Alvarado received the 13 Artists grant from the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1992 and was part of the inaugural Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane in 1993. – Rappler.com
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