Bert Monterona: First-rate Artist and Human Being
By Sylvia L. Mayuga
INQUIRER.net / 11/14/2007

“Overseas Pinoy” does not quite describe Bert Monterona. The farther this Filipino citizen travels, the deeper he seems to burrow into his roots in tribal Mindanao – and deeper.

But a universal quality emerges whenever a first-rate artist takes a road that also makes him a first-rate human being. Bert lives by – and feels as only artists can – the timeless values that much-threatened clusters of our Philippine indigenous tribes still live by against steep odds. This is so striking that it hasn’t taken long for other cultures to recognize and hail his art with awards, grants, exhibit space and critical recognition.

That he is now in British Columbia, Canada on an exhibition grant from the Maple Ridge Art Gallery as International Artist of the year 2007 is only the latest evidence of his universal worth. No, I wouldn’t call it “currency,” as a closer look reveals. His exhibit on view during this residency, Bert also gives workshop sessions to both children and adults in a technique he invented – painting with bamboo sticks.
You can experience the power of his art yourself. Way beyond that, however, is what his workshops demonstrate without words – how he deals with the commercial world when he chooses to educate and share his invention rather than keep it to himself as a “trade secret” rewarded with coins. How many world-renowned artists do you know, or have heard of, to do that today?

That said there’s no need to reinvent the wheel on Bert Monterona, his art and presence in the world. There are many witnesses to both his life and art.

By way of introduction, here’s an old friend, Gingging Avellanosa, now Mrs. Valle, offering a precious memory of his first steps into art: “(S)ometime in mid-80s, when Fact Finding was the only way to find out about human rights issues in hinterland communities, I saw this man dropping face down on an open street with his SLR (Single lens reflex camera) aimed at a passing APC (Armored Personnel Carrier). The incident was not a shooting of a movie, but real time firing of automatic rifles coming from nowhere, which the Fact Finding Team composed of non-government organizations only heard but never saw.

“That was how I knew Bert back then, when he was just an amateur photojournalist out on a Fact Finding Mission with non-government organizations in Davao City, who bravely trooped to Laac, a far-flung municipality of Davao del Norte, to find out facts about reported human rights violations committed by men in uniform.” Here’s the rest of Gingging’s testimony.

Fast forward decades later to 2004 to Krip Yuson in serendipitous discovery of Monterona in an art opening in Vancouver:“… large wall hangings immediately astounded with their glorious bursts of tropical colors and intricate mélange of familiar, indigenous forms. Some were hung back to back, suspended from the low ceiling. Each one arrested the eye and beckoned for closer intrigue. The canvases appeared to be a cross between bark and tough cloth, horizontal edges framed with vine or unraveling into wild tassels. Indeed, tribal Mindanao had crossed the Pacific.

A year later, Arve Banez and Mae Templa of the Mindanao Interfaith Services Foundation Inc. summed up Bert’s career in 2005: “Bert is a compleat artist - an educator and cultural activist. Nationally and internationally acclaimed, he is a recipient of the Australia Council for the Arts, the Asian Artists Awards of the Vermont Studio Center in the US, the Philip Morris Group of Companies’ ASEAN Art Awards, the GSIS Museum’s Artist of the Month and Art Association of the Philippines’ Best Entry Award.
“He has popularized and vigorously promoted Mindanaoan Arts and Culture through art exhibitions, lectures and workshops in different countries abroad. He has had major solo exhibitions in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Australia, USA and Canada.

“He was the Mindanao Coordinator of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA)-Committee on Visual Arts from 1996-2001. As an artist-educator he has organized art workshops in schools and communities, for skills development, art- as- therapy and peace building. Active in social development advocacy work for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Mindanao, Monterona’s art elevates social realities to aesthetic heights.”

Farther on to this year, 2007, the art critic/historian Alice Guillermo gives an update on a world trajectory:“The latest Filipino achiever in the arts abroad is Bert Monterona, whose odyssey from Davao ended in Canada, where he won a prize for his mural Women for Peace and Environment at the International Festival and Symposium held in Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada. A juried international competition with 80 entries from Spain, Belgium, Chile, the Philippines, Australia, the United States and Canada, the jury chose five winners, unranked - Monterona was one of them.”

Critics like Carol Thorbes of the San Francisco University have weighed in with words like these: “Art filled with energy, colour … Monterona is well known in Southeast Asia, Australia and the United States for his surreal exploration and bridging of indigenous, technological, spiritual, cultural and political themes. (He) uses colour, human figures, symbols and motifs to depict how his ancestral home has (both) triumphed and failed to preserve its history and ways of life… Created from dye, textile paint and acrylic, the tapestries look and feel like hand woven cloths and artifacts from south east Asia’s past.”

Social issues were very much on the mind of another, Alan Haig-Brown: “(I) ssues of colonization have not limited Bert from commenting on the shamefully restricted role of women in Philippine culture. He avoids the simple traps of ‘honouring’ women that generations of western artists have fallen into - from the sweet Madonnas of the Renaissance to contemporary artists' nudes that seek to make women some exemplary but unattainable earth mother or sexual goddess.

“ Bert shows women carrying the tools of their trade, from cooking pots to millinery shears, walking across a tight rope in a tenuous attempt to reach some stage where respect will reward them for their perseverance, if not for their reality. The tight rope is a striking metaphor and condemnation of all men, western and Asian, who continue to allow this exploitation on all levels from gilded cages of marriage to the plastic opulence of the bordello.”

But crossing a line separating objective commentary and deep emotion seems an inevitable response to this man’s art. Haig-Brown concludes, “Can a man be a feminist? This privileged white western male won't attempt the answer, but I will admit to tears at Bert Monterona's vibrant expression of the issues.”

Catherine Febria echoes the feeling as she herself crosses the line between art and science: “As a female graduate student in environmental science, it was his portrayal of environmental destruction and the exploitation of women that immediately resonated within me. His depictions of religious warfare between Muslims and Christians are eerily applicable in today’s global state of affairs. It is remarkable that his beautifully created compositions seem to transcend all cultures and people of all walks of life. In each individual, a different feeling is invoked within, a calling to any one of his many themes, a certain

connection to Bert’s artwork that is unique to the human experience.” Here’s the rest of her witness.
“My works, whatever their forms and motives reflect the magical ritualism of my rich indigenous roots…starting to tease the viewer’s speculation because my figures have come to life,” says Bert himself. Here’s his website link. Roam and enjoy!