HONG KONG’S Statue Square is a legendary place for Filipino domestic helpers about to arrive in Hong Kong for the first time: Its reputation as a meeting place for the Filipino community is well-known. There are similar meeting places in other cities worldwide where overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) thrive.
Statue Square is an actual square with 1960s-styled fountains, seating and space located directly in front of the head office of architect Norman Foster’s futuristic-looking Hong Kong Bank building.
The main feature of the square is the “Black Man”—a statue of a long-forgotten Hong Kong Bank manager whose bronze statue was painted with a protective black sealant 12 years ago, thus, the name.
Statue Square is technically the area in front of the Hong Kong Bank building, but in parlance it refers to a wider area roughly bounded by the Filipino businesses found in Worldwide House, in the middle of Hong Kong’s Central Business District then moving around the Legislative Council building, through nearby Chater Garden, and spreading down toward Hong Kong Harbour, where the much-loved, now demolished old Star Ferry building was originally sited next to City Hall, still providing shade and shelter.
Bonus area
On Sundays and public holidays, the streets in this area—busy and congested on weekdays—are closed to traffic, a rare allowance to Hong Kong’s overseas workers and a hangover from the days of British rule.
These empty streets become a bonus area of pedestrian activity for Filipinos—rock concerts, prayer meetings, dancing, beauty pageants; cultural displays set up on temporary staging alongside picnics, gambling and casual meetings.
Remarkably the area, when filled with Filipinos, replicates a map of the Philippine archipelago. Different areas have their designated meeting places: The Ibalois of Benguet meet near the Black Man while those from Mindanao meet near City Hall.
Alwin Reamillo walked into this Sunday replication of the Philippines shouting “balu---t, balu---t!” doing his own artist performance as a balut seller.
His performance attracted little attention—he was, after all, performing in a place where activity of all kinds is common. Alwin had to compete with the itinerant photographer taking snaps and the phone-card sellers doing the rounds for those who couldn’t be bothered to walk to the nearby crowded Worldwide IDD shops.
He had to compete with prayer meetings and happy chatting and people just doing their usual Sunday routine.
Alwin’s performance replicated an earlier performance in Manila in 1999 for Ugnayan: Philippine International Performance Arts Festival. In true Reamillo style, it was embellished and extended into an eight-hour performance a week later at Hong Kong ArtWalk, a yearly one-night art event involving all Hong Kong galleries.
Alwin had a basket full of his own balut; duck eggs strengthened with plaster and emulsion and depicting a variety of scenes and maps of Hong Kong and the Philippines.
Vital artist
His balut have both a storytelling role and are objects of almost magical possession, something that could be honored and treated as an icon of mystical qualities. And in his basket he also has, for the genuinely hungry, a handful of real balut purchased in Wan Chai market, a place frequented by Filipinas to buy the shopping for their employers and a midweek meeting place.
As usual with Alwin’s work and seen on his balut, is a bouncing between cultures, historical events, locations, and a personal psychology that uncompromisingly draws on his background as the son of a Manila piano manufacturer; a graduate of the Philippine High School for the Arts and friend of other artists, writers and filmmakers; a long-time Australian resident and a well-traveled, respected and vital artist who dips in and out of the Philippines’ art world.
Talking with Alwin is always an event. With his photographic memory providing anecdotes and details, he has a raconteur’s knowledge of Philippine history, politics and a broad understanding of how it all fits in. Spirited conversations are long remembered for his wonderful diatribes, intransigence in the face of argument, and a circular confidence that the listener eventually realizes is drawn from an inner purity and passion.
Alwin lives and breathes and thinks art. The stimuli of the world and its history is altered and subverted with both humor and anger in every art piece he tackles. If, in the future, Alwin’s artistic output is placed end-to-end in art-retrospective style it will be a marvelous personal interpretation of Philippine history.
Communal work
Alwin’s recent work has revolved around large constructions and installation pieces. Often he works with communities (previously in the UK, New Zealand, Japan, Australia and the Philippines). He has directed the construction of helicopters and whales using found objects and, in what is evolving into a signature style, the use of crab shells. The community use of egg-shells will inevitably be a future and undoubtedly elaborate project.
Food has always featured prominently in Alwin’s art, this most basic of human needs being a lynchpin for Alwin the artist and an audience that can immediately relate to its subverted depiction and use in his work.
Pivotal in these community art projects is the communal preparation and eating of food. The crabs seen on the Thuringowa helicopter were communally cooked, eaten and prepared as art. Apart from being delicious fun to eat, it was a basic team-building exercise prior to working together.
His most ambitious project in this mold was the reconstitution of his family piano-making workshop with the original artisans brought together for the first time since the business closed over a decade ago. The results, a labor of love and devotion, are a series of pianos rebuilt into working order and improved by having their cases decorated by Alwin in his no-nonsense interpretations of Philippine history.
A related series of piano “wings” are simply beautiful objects. Alwin is renowned for his no-compromise-no-taboos attitude to art, so the beauty of these wings is a revelation.
Shamanistic performance
Last March, Alwin was the Hong Kong ArtWalk artist-in-residence for one month with a studio located in an industrial building overlooking the touristy Ocean Park.
The studio quickly became filled with found objects and a profusion of Reamillo ideas. The studio was almost too small to contain both! This quiet studio was the scene of great artistic energy and balut eggs rolled out, paintings painted and objects produced.
On the night of ArtWalk, Alwin tramped the streets yelling “balu---t, balu---t!” and Filipinas emerged from high-rise towers and doorways to see what was being sold.
The ArtWalk audience numbered 2,000 people. Alwin visited galleries giving in each a shamanistic performance involving cloth, incantations and mysterious circles and lines of carefully measured balut.
As a visitor here, an immigrant in Australia and, at times, a returnee to the Philippines and its art world, Alwin is often the outsider in his own performances.
After his Statue Square performance, he visited Hong Kong’s hub of Philippine commercial activity, Worldwide Plaza, with its Philippine supply stores, remittance centers, and cheap down-payment electronic shops. He was humbled by the frantic but incredibly poignant activity of the place.
Memories of that similar performance in Manila in 1999, and friends, growing up in San Andres Bukid, schooling in Makiling, and his recent decision to spend more time living in the Philippines rather than Australia, dwell in the cracks in this balut seller’s visit to Hong Kong.
John Batten organizes Hong Kong ArtWalk and writes about art, culture and heritage.
When in Cebu City, please visit gregmelep.com `for your retirement and real estate needs.
When in Cebu City, please visit gregmelep.com `for your retirement and real estate needs.
Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer
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