LAWYER Ipat Luna, student volunteer Virna Odiver and artist Egay Fernandez beside his painting. PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY LOUISE LANE CALICDAN

AN ART GALLERY in the middle of the mixed neighborhood that is Cubao seems to the uninitiated an unlikely place for the youth to learn about environmental advocacy.

But with Earth Day nearing on April 22, Norma Liongoren, owner of Liongoren Gallery in Quezon City, converted her annual women’s art show, “Walong Filipina” (8 Filipino women) into a learning project merging environmentalism and art, with a lot of help from students of the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman.

On view since March 25, the exhibit of paintings and mixed media works was a collaboration between students, eight male artists and eight women environmentalists.

Seven students of UP Art Studies professor Flaudette May Datuin, including herself, served as writers, researchers, and facilitators for each pair of featured environmentalists and artists: Environmental lawyer Ipat Luna and social realist painter Edgar “Egay” Fernandez; zero waste and recycling pioneer Luz Sabas and cross-disciplinary artist Mark Salvatus; Mindoro-based antimining activists Evelyn Cacha and Efren Garcellano; UP Tacloban dean and marine biologist Margarita de la Cruz and Tacloban-based artist Rico Palacio.

Joining them were Dagupan City’s eco-waste management advocate and herbalist Dr. Judea Millora and Dagupan-based self-taught artist Jojit Solano; international aquaculture and mangrove expert Dr. Jurgenne Primavera and Panay-based artist PG Zoluaga; Assumption (Antipolo) environmental education maverick eco-park founder Sr. Luz Emmanuel Soriano and Antipolo artist Renato Habulan; and butterfly habitat conservationist Lydia Robledo and artist Mario de Rivera, both Metro Manilans.

Enlightening experience

The interaction between artists and advocates proved to be an enlightening experience for the students.

For Virna Pamela Odiver, conversations with Luna and Fernandez, both passionate environmental advocates, changed her attitudes about environmentalism.

“I now look at the environment in a whole new light. I now think twice before throwing things in the garbage. I now think thrice before buying something that could contribute to all the waste that has been polluting our surroundings,” she said.

“No one should be called an environmentalist because everyone should do their part in preserving nature,” Luna opined.

“If everyone would just play their own role, then it would not be necessary to tag certain individuals as environmentalists, because they would not be unique anymore. They are just doing what they should be doing,” she added.

Ceres Marie Canilao said the project was able to bring people from different fields together for a common cause: Saving the environment. “The experience made me realize that interdisciplinary projects like this are very productive because they make the public realize that they can contribute within their field,” she said.

Common goal

Added Canilao: “It made me realize that we could do something from our own discipline—the arts. It does not necessarily have to be limited to relief operations during natural disasters; we could come up with more creative environmental projects like this.”

For Hemerson Dimacale, veteran painter Habulan and Sr. Luz Emmanuel, a nun who helped build an ecology park, have a common goal, although they may not have taken the same path. “They each have different approaches in touching people’s hearts and making them realize how important it is to protect our environment. They share the same vision and core values,” he said.

Even the younger artists learned something from the experience. For Salvatus, whose previous art projects included an online call for images reinventing Philippine urban centers, the most effective way of learning environmentalism was seeing zero waste advocate Sabas practice what she preached.

Recycled objects

On board Sabas’ car, the artist noticed various objects recycled by the advocate. Seeing Sabas assign new functions to things that would otherwise be considered as trash, Salvatus produced functional art works using tape and clutter salvaged from a bag he always carried around in trips within the city.

Dagupan-based Solano, meanwhile, responded to Millora’s advocacy on zero waste by creating a painting depicting a surreal wasteland, carrying a message that this nightmare would become a reality if people remain passive.

“Working for this year’s “Walong Filipina” provided us with a platform through which we can concretely understand that that the crisis we now refer to as “environmental” can be understood, not just as a scientific problem but also a cultural one,” Datuin said. “Healing the earth means healing, not just poverty in the material and economic sense, but the poverty of the imagination and the spirit.”

Liongoren put it succinctly: “For some artists and students who are not yet familiar with environmental issues, this experience opened up more opportunities to network, converge and learn on a deeper level.”

The author is a research and advocacy coordinator of the Center for Environmental Concerns.