Viva España/Long Live América is a diptych exhibition that straddles between two different locations in Metropolitan Iloilo chosen for their historical, cultural and political affinities.
Viva España will be presented at Museo Iloilo (built in 1971) located in the capital city. It is the first government-sponsored museum outside Metro Manila.
The museum houses an outstanding collection of Iloilo’s cultural heritage. But what makes Museo Iloilo significant is its around 300 pieces of religious artefacts and figures from home altars of old, prominent and devout Catholic families in the province. The Ilonggos’ generous donations of Catholic material culture firmly and eloquently attest to the influence of 400 years of Spanish colonial rule on the Visayan region and its people.
On October 5, 1889, Maria Christina, then Queen Regent of Spain, raised the status of the town to the Royal City of the South due to Iloilo’s economic development during the 18th and 19th centuries.
In 1896, the Queen Regent named Iloilo “La Muy Noble Ciudad,” or “The Most Noble City,” in appreciation of the Ilonggos allegiance to Spain, and their chivalry to defend the “Queen City of the South” against the surge of the Philippine Revolution.
This section of the diptych is an attempt to “colonize” the space of the museum, retaining some selected pieces from its collection, and intervene in its present narrative.
Long Live América will be presented at Balay Sueño Annex. Balay Sueño, a 1940s ancestral house located at the corner of Benedicto-Washington Streets in Jaro, Iloilo, was built by Don Modesto Ledesma, an haciendero who served as a mayor of Jaro in the 1920s. Once a separate city, it was merged with Iloilo City in the 1940s during the American colonial administration of the Philippines under its policy of Benevolent Assimilation. Jaro plays an important role for the Roman Catholic Church in this part of the Christian nation. It is where the Archdiocese of Jaro, the Metropolitan jurisdiction that encompasses the provinces of Antique, Guimaras, Iloilo and Negros Occidental, is headquartered.
While this section of the diptych exhibition reflects the country’s American colonial history with snippets of Hollywood, cinema, American fashion, and America as a super power, it also attempts at self-reflexivity on the Filipinos’ love-hate relationship with America.
This exhibition by Norberto Roldan is on view until December 31 at Museo Iloilo and Kri8 Art Space.