Acrylic on canvas, stretched and ready to hang.
Signed certificate of authenticity.
PLEASE TAKE NOTE: this artwork was accidentally damaged before it was exhibited in 2017. The 3+ centimetre tear was immediately fixed with acid free paper, archival glue and a final layer of canvas patch on the back area of the tear. The front side was re-primed and repainted in time for the exhibit.
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STATEMENT
This artwork was part of my 2017 exhibition “Discography,” a collection of canvases that purports to be art for vinyl sleeves of fictitious albums of made-up bands.
This “album art” is for the fictitious band Blakbard and the title “Hanging Outside Bars” refers to several things. The bars (stripes) on the building refers to the uniforms of Nazi concentration camp victims. The word “hanging” could mean hanging out, or the freedom enjoyed after the defeat of fascism during the war. But it could also mean that fascism never went away but just adapted to the changing times and that even beyond the horrors of the Nazi camps, hangings (symbolised by the dead tree in the painting) and killings go on.
I did this painting after I heard news that my father’s Islamic hometown of Marawi in southern Philippines was carpet bombed by the Philippine military. Suspected armed local supporters of the ISIS terrorist group had infiltrated the city and instead of weeding them out (initial reports said they numbered less than 50) after the residents were evacuated, the president still decided to bomb the whole city.
About 350,000 people were displaced, living in tents at evacuation centres. It has been two years and they have still to return to their properties which until now are in ruins and has not yet been rehabilitated.
The decision to bomb the city has been lauded by the rest of the largely Christian population, blinded as they are that it is the only solution to the terrorist threat. In fact martial law on the island of Mindanao (where Marawi is) has not yet been lifted since the conflict began.
The huddled figure outside the building in the painting looks like a mummy or a dead body in shrouds but is actually a victim of extra judicial killing. More than 20,000 have been killed in the Duterte administration’s war on drugs. During his first year as president, victims were found wrapped in packaging tape, with social media propaganda trolls, in support of the campaign, posting that these murders were committed by South American drug cartels because of the style of wrapping the bodies in tape before disposal.
After the first year, the murderers did not care about wrapping the bodies anymore, and the police just explained the killings as done in defense because the suspects violently resisted arrest and were shooting at them. These victims were mostly the poorest of the poor, with no money to buy guns, they don’t even have enough money to buy three meals a day.
Most of the victims were actually innocent people, with no links to the drug trade. It has been alleged that the police had to maintain a monthly quota of dead bodies in order to sustain the propaganda that the country is finally on its way to economic and moral recovery because crime is steadily being eradicated because of the wiping out of the root cause which is the drug trade.
I created music for this artwork using an old poem of mine as “lyrics.”
Here’s the poem:
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Basically
Anne Frank was right.
In spite of everything she still believed
that people are good at heart.
They’re always willing to help
end the misery of other people.
A single bullet here,
a knife plunging in there,
a few blows with a rusty pipe.
Sometimes that’s all it takes.
Effortless, powerful nonetheless.
At times they can be ingenious, too,
for goodness knows no bounds.
Rooms and rooms of liberating gas,
warm cavernous furnaces,
gigantic photogenic luminous clouds,
two babels of singing fire.
But nothing can beat
the bashing in of a skull
for who knows what evil lurks inside.
It might spring out
and crawl on the ground
and multiply
to put an end
to all this goodness of the heart.
- Ivan Macarambon