Story and photos by Suzanne June G. Perante
Special to the BusinessMirror
The natural beauty of Baguio City and its semi-temperate climate entice thousands of tourists to visit the “Summer Capital” and “The City of Pines” all year round, making it a must-see tourism hub.
The upland city is also a melting pot of cultures and home to creative folks.
In 2017, the city received a recognition of being a “Creative City” from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco). The recognition sought to encourage the promotion of people’s arts and crafts.
Aside from the iconic woodcraft and weaving tradition of the city, street-wall painting has also emerged from the creative minds living in the city. Certain colorful ethnic-designed walls in Baguio created a buzz in the Internet lately. It fascinated a lot of tourists and pedestrians along the Jollibee-Caltex road in front of the Victory Liner terminal and in the military cut-off road.
The person behind these murals, known as “Hila-bana,” is 21-year-old street artist Venazir “Vena” Hannah Martinez.
To help preserve what is known as the cultural foundation of the original Baguio, this budding artist conceptualized a mural depicting the process of an Igorot on foot figuratively looking for his identity. These murals are intentionally placed where visitors usually arrive and leave to visually introduce the fundamental identity of the people of Baguio City.
Vena was born and raised in Tarlac and is the youngest of three. She has an older brother and a sister who was also a fine-arts graduate from the University of the Philippines Baguio. As she grew up, Vena used to draw a lot and has always been the representative in poster making and editorial cartooning contests, but she never actually had fine arts as her first choice as a career. She was initially planning to take up either architecture or engineering, but when she was informed of passing the UPCAT, she finally pursued fine arts at University of the Philippines Baguio, just like her older sister did, and finished cum laude.
It took her some time to identify her style as an artist. In her second year in college, she did a lot of paintings on canvass. While working on paintings, she realized she was into the combination of abstract and realism.
“An artist should be and identified by her artwork and innovative creations,” she explained. She defines her style as detailed yet spontaneous with a particular focus on human figures because she loves the anthropological side of art focused on human figures.
She sustained her human-interest style in her artwork, but in her third year, she tried to do it through street art for her thesis.
“For me, street art is the strongest medium of all. It’s a true form of art,” she claimed. Her love for street-wall painting started with a Gayaman tattoo art along Trancoville area in Baguio City, which extends near the area of Saint Louis University.
Vena’s fine-arts teacher and thesis adviser Professor Liza Ilagan said the idea was inspired by a mural thesis in UP Diliman. They conceptualized an art that would test the consciousness of the people of Baguio in indigenous art form.
Up until the present, Vena still keeps in touch with her adviser. Ilagan witnessed Vena’s growth and considers her among the top performers in class.
Vena is now a freelance artist and has already created different projects with the Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway, San Miguel Pale Pilsen and Figaro Coffee Baguio, among many others. She got invited to exhibit at an art fair in Makati and just recently to perform at Wonderland Music Festival, which she both considered as a dream come true. But she also considers the majority of her works as “pro bono” projects.
“It is my advocacy. It is a form of bringing back to the community, just like how UP taught us,” she said.
Image credits: Suzanne June G. Perante