Mideo Cruz

To be intentionally and consciously irreverent seems to be the foremost guiding philosophy of performance and mixed media artist Mideo Cruz. His works have always been characterized as dissident, shocking, and blasphemous, only because they expose modern society’s misinformed choices and farcical lifestyle in a manner that does not entirely agree with age-old conventions.

In fact, the artist would rather create experiential pieces, transient installations, and action-oriented ephemeral performances that directly induce heady emotions from viewers rather than make permanent artworks that will eventually end up in a dark and dusty corner of some gallery or museum. But Mideo’s preference does not so much stem from a possible contempt towards traditional sensibilities nurtured and developed by the masters. Rather, it springs from his inclination to always explore creative possibilities, to get out of the box, and to communicate well with his audiences.

In Mideo’s world, crosses are spewing fake blood, profaned with bottles of Coke and phallic symbols. Ancient gods and goddesses become unrecognizable yet familiar mutations, decorated with the trappings of modernity. Revered religious emblems and structures are defamed, disassembled into just ordinary bodily constructs — stripped from their supposed consecrated qualities. Live installations and performances are marked by the artist’s sheer ability to shock viewers to the core by way of espousing hard-to-forget visual traumas. Pieces are not only devices that target the faculty of sight but are transformed into breathing and multisensory opuses that affect one’s sense of smell, touch, and hearing.

Mideo says he always wanted to break conventional forms back when he was still studying fine arts at the University of Santo Tomas. He wasn’t contended in just stimulating his viewers’ sense of sight or to use just one medium. He wanted his pieces to be interactive so that audiences can participate in his opuses’ dialogue. A result of this is Mideo’s preference to add elements and objects that will rouse his viewers from reverie or put them in a disgusted trance — such as a heap of rotten meat, red goo, guts, and detritus in his installations and an eerie and dream-like music playing in the background in his shows.

Adding even more texture to Mideo’s work is the full-fledged, no-holds-barred physical participation of the artist. In his performances, Mideo is not one to shy away from giving light to a multisensory problem. For instance, Mideo lay naked on a bed like a cadaver waiting for the forensics to check him out in a performance-installation called ‘Pleasure of the Flesh,’ which seemingly presents a narrative on debauchery. Once, he wore a flak jacket bearing an American flag, a black ski mask, and a dog muzzle and carried a bag adorned with the image of Mickey Mouse, his version of an “anti-globalization agitprop costume,” with conviction amidst the glances of the people around him.
It seems that Mideo is not afraid to make statements. A self-confessed activist since the mid-‘90s, the artist is always on the lookout to spark discourse and to throw in a critique here and there “from within the context of the Philippine cultural landscape: A terrain ubiquitously marked — or marred — by the persistence of feudal-age-folk Catholicism and poverty amidst the economic and social hegemonies of changing colonial empires and dictatorships overt and implied.”

True enough, aside from shock value, always present and central in Mideo’s art is his social conscience, palpably oscillating from one artwork to another. There is nothing amiss in Mideo’s concern to express his observations and statements about his immediate surroundings. Shown elsewhere however, the artist’s pieces transcend the Philippine context and become universal works, which tackle the perils of idolatry, neo-liberalism, mass consumerism, and globalization, to name a few. His latest exhibition, titled “Deities” at the Galleria Duemila, is a perfect example of how Mideo translates into tangible surfaces an appraisal of the global society with regard to spiritual fanaticism.

His first-ever solo exhibition in a commercial gallery, “Deities” presents permanent sculpture-installations of differently formed gods and goddesses rendered in concrete and plaster of Paris and juxtaposed with found objects. It veers away from the artist’s favored short-lived installations and performances. Thematically, Mideo “stays well within range of his previous concerns, venturing perhaps to some previously unexplored borders yet never completely crossing out of familiar territory.”

The exhibit is a subtle attempt to divulge the development of deities over time. Having done a lot of works about deities, God, and religion, Mideo reveals he still found it hard to mount the exhibit, as he had to research comprehensively. But the artist’s exploration, though tedious and time-consuming, had left him with rich and some blasphemous materials to work with. As an outcome, Mideo’s body of work in Deities is ornately peppered with hybrids of eclectic secular symbols and allusions from many cultures. He got inspiration from religious iconography spanning different civilizations and from “the kouros and kore of ancient Greece, the imagery of Catholicism, and animal symbolism.”

Aesthetically antiseptic, Mideo’s 40-piece anthology is dominated by geometric and linear forms, such as a sphere that is “laden with complex spiritual connotations” throughout civilizations. Mideo says his purpose is to explore the materialization of the forms and figures of our deities, how they are seen in the modern world. Social commentary, a recurring theme in the artist’s oeuvre, is seen, for example, in his use of plaster heads of Ronald McDonald over that a god or goddess’s, implying how people of this generation are steeped in fascination over capitalism and consumerism. 

Sculptures were conservatively constructed resembling ruins of ancient times, yet none of them fit the mold of out typical icons: “Heads, limbs, torsos, and appendages are intentionally mismatched.” The mixed media paintings, on the other hand, were done in a somber palette, all the more conveying an ominous feeling that the show unequivocally represents.

All in all, the exhibit is a revelation of how “religion contributes to perpetuating exploitative structures,” an understated eye-opener, a far more gentle teacher. In representing modern-day idols, Mideo gives audiences a feast to the senses. And in the artist’s intent to use sparing and minimalist aesthetics over the dramatic and opulent sensibilities manifested in his earlier works, Mideo’s visual messages still haven’t been lost, as it subtly yet effectively continues the discourse, that act of endless questioning and critiquing he is celebrated for.

“Deities by Mideo Cruz” will be on view until March 1 at the Galleria Duemila, 210 Loring St., Pasay City. For more information, call 831-9990 or visit www.galleriaduemila.com.