par Marilla, Angelie
Référence Interpretative Studies on Southeast Asian Culture, Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, page (27-58)
Publication Publié, 2015
Partie d'ouvrage collectif
Résumé : Recognizing that history can be archived in visual evidences, this research explores the theoretical and practical aspects of using visual sources while providing one case study of history through paintings. This work is illustrative in nature but the historical enquiry sought to match the depictive content of the period- specific artwork, the Basi Revolt Series (1821). The subject matter is pursued through discursive means of addressing the problematic colonial visuality by looking at the paintings’ iconography, and the rationality of pasyon (Filipino interpretation of the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ) and revolution, as popularized by Ileto, 1997. The research attests that the iconography of the paintings has apparent contradictions, refracting the political and religious circumstances during the Spanish colonial period. The fourteen paintings, reconfiguring the pasyon iconography connect the series to the folk catholic lifeway. Seen as such, the Basi Revolt as rebellion against the monopoly of the basi (sugarcane wine) industry is distilled in ritual, not economic. The series is a telling tale of the native resistance against the attempt of the state to clamp down on a cultural practice of making and drinking wine as a precondition to economic progress and political control. The paintings peculiarly portray the experience of the Ilocano people in Northern Philippines by capturing moments of colonial control and the response of the people to the repression a community’s cultural expression.