Mindanao Daily NEWS LIFESTYLE . PEOPLE . PLACES . EVENTS Bringing Good News of Mindanao
Volume III, No. 145
Editor: Christine Cabiasa
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12 NovemberSee 18, story 2014 on PageB1
Bukidnon children’s artworks showcased in France By MARK FRANCISCO Assistant Lifestyle Editor
T
By MARK FRANCISCO, Assistant Lifestyle Editor
he kids of barangay Kisayab, an extremely remote community in San Fernando, Bukidnon may have never set foot anywhere else in the Philippines, let alone in Cagayan de Oro. But some 12,054 kilometers and two continents away in a city called Brest in France lies an arts studio called PL Pilier-Rouge. For a whole month last September 2014, the whole gallery of PL Pilier-Rouge was reserved for the simple artworks made by 32 children from barangay Kisayab. Louie Talents (yup that’s his real name), a Cagayanonborn artist based in Paris, brought the artworks when he went back to France last May. But it was only half of the story which gave birth to Talents’ Meupia Art Project. It so happened that French schoolchildren from Ecole Petit-Paris saw a video documenting the Manobo children
doing their artworks. The French schoolchildren were so moved that right on the spot, they also made bondpaper size artworks with a touch of stickers and words of what they intended to say and show the Manobo children. Owing to the slim chances for these Manobo and French schoolchildren to personally meet and the language barrier to consider, the creative letters wree merged together by Talents through artistic cauterization to form one artwork with a visual image of a French girl giving comfort to a Manobo boy. “Meupia Art Project is a socially engaged art which aims to communicate art as a reflective and achievable idea through confrontation. It aims to raise public awareness of these talented Manobo children and a symbolic statement of fighting for children’s rights,” Talents said. It all started when the globe-trotting Talents went back to his Northern Mindanao roots in 2013 searching for inspiration for his latest artwork and went to the farthest barangay of Kisayab, 19 kilometers from San Fernando proper. It was there that he had a cultural awakening. “I started with a wall-bound artwork study of using
acrylic paint with tribal fabrics found in the island of Mindanao, Philippines. I felt it was not enough so I decided to go deeper with my research and immerse myself in the community. Then I found out that the Manobos are among the largest tribal populations in Mindanao who practice farming with an integral component of their ideological system based specifically on their conception of the world believing in the supernatural and natural world,” Talents said. While on cultural immersion in barangay Kisayab, Talents talked to the elders and vowed to help them pass on and preserve to the younger generation their ancestral culture. The Meupia Art Project is only one of them. Earlier in April this year, Talents brought the Manobo children to Cagayan de Oro City where they performed their original native dances at the Xavier University Little Theater. Talents’ next project would be to establish a sustaining cultural center in San Fernando town. The project is being supported by two local government units (LGUs) located 12,054 kilometers apart – the municipality of San Fernando in Bukidnon and the city of Brest in France.
Office of the Civil Defense-10 regional director Ana C. Cañeda reminds students of “what to dos” before, during and after earthquake. Photo supplied
Students of Gusa Regional Science Highschool participates in the 4th National Simultaneous Earthquake drill on November 14 initiated by the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council chaired by Office of Civil Defense-10. Photo supplied
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