The Power of Symbols
Written by Jay Bautista
January 30, 2023
As an award-winning illustrator and editorial cartoonist for various news agencies – both local and foreign – for four decades now, Dengcoy Miel constantly keeps abreast of current affairs and is always spot-on in conveying his opinions via political cartoons. His works have been lauded and published in newspapers. As effective as he is with pen and ink, Miel saves his sharpest commentary for the canvas. A painter at heart, he often reverts to brushes and oil paints to express his ruminations on history, religion, and our post-colonial existence.
In Kapit Lang, Miel’s latest exhibition of recent paintings at Eskinita Art Gallery, he dwells deeper into the quagmire of culture, doubly interpreting the Imperial Cross as false faith in the name of religion and as an inverted sword connoting ‘kapit sa patalim.’ Growing up in Catbalogan with a stern mother who was a former nun, Miel has often found himself shiftting between doubt and repentance. Since his first solo exhibition in 2016, he has brought his artistic inquiries into his painting and developed his own brand of animated realism.
His main piece for the show, “Kapit Lang” bears witness to the long post-colonial religious procession we are all enmeshed in. Taken as a whole, Miel lines up the flagellants with the religious while parading/parodying the Nazarene in a comical way. From afar, in what seems to be a 500-year-old debacle, Miel reclaims our history as the death of Magellan is mischievously reenacted. As if the scenes are not surreal enough, Miel even includes himself in the composition—a graphic device also utilized by Caravaggio, Jan van Eyck, and Diego Velasquez.
As with his previous shows, Miel considers Jose Rizal, believing that much of the national hero’s vision for our country remains unrealized to this day. In “Consummatum Est and Other Worlds,” Miel explores the existential paradox of Rizal and his ideas in hindsight. There is a gap in our various interpretations and we tend to forget Rizal’s timeless admonition to Filipinos in charting our course as a nation. He remains alien to us even more than a hundred years later.
Despite living in Singapore for more than half of his life, Miel has never distanced himself from his countrymen and keeps updated with the news back home. “I Heard the News” was done as he listened to gory news in the middle of the night. Longing for home, he would paint everything he could, including himself, seen avoiding the church’s security camera.
Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s version of the “Vitruvian Man,” which connotes perfection and the triumph of the human spirit, Miel’s “Vitruvian Christ” captures a human Christ whose teachings are manipulated by the rich and powerful to absolve them of their own transgressions, effectively bypassing the Almighty.
In the end, Miel views his works as catalysts hanging on walls. One can validate, confirm, or even question the meaning in his pieces, as long as they make us think and serve to open up public discourse.
