{"id":193356,"date":"2018-12-10T05:40:57","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T10:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=193356"},"modified":"2018-12-10T05:40:57","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T10:40:57","slug":"how-this-tausug-artist-was-forged-in-the-crucible-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/12\/10\/how-this-tausug-artist-was-forged-in-the-crucible-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"How this Tausug artist was forged in the crucible of war"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(Photo via PNA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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(Photo via PNA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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(Photo via PNA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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(Photo via PNA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

ZAMBOANGA CITY<\/strong>\u00a0— In February 1974, the proud town of Jolo was totally burned down and bombed to oblivion.<\/p>\n

On the eighth day of that month, hordes of Moro rebels attacked and occupied it, igniting intensive seven days of fighting before government forces retook it. Some 20,000 rebels, civilians and soldiers were killed.<\/p>\n

Ramir Tawasil was six years old when he and his siblings fled from the battle on its first day, riding piggyback on his elder sister as they ran from their house towards the nearby town pier.<\/p>\n

On a pumpboat, they chased a passing Japanese cargo boat, whose crew rescued them.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the boat, I saw Jolo burning, the bombardment\u201d, Tawasil narrated in an interview. \u201cI felt sad\u201d.<\/p>\n

The crucible of that war forged his personal mission to be a peace advocate, he surmises — rendered through his extraordinary paintings and sculptures that mainly express his Tausug culture and social tradition.<\/p>\n

His artful advocacy achieved anew another milestone for him when he was bestowed the Peaceweaver Award by Peace Advocates Zamboanga (PAZ) last December 2, during a gala program.<\/p>\n

The award is given annually by PAZ and Interreligious Solidarity for Peace (ISP) during the Mindanao Week of Peace celebration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was in primary school, I was already obsessed with drawing scenes of people, not banal trees, houses and mountains. My art teacher years later told me I once sketched a hostage taking incident by Moro rebels in Zamboanga City\u201d, Tawasil said.<\/p>\n

He was honored as \u201cArtist of the Year\u201d in the public elementary school in the city where he studied after displacement from Jolo.<\/p>\n

He said his mother, a school teacher, took him back to Jolo to study there, where again he was named \u201cArtist of the Year\u201d.<\/p>\n

Years later, he designed the PAZ logo, which features a colorful bird that has since been adopted internationally as a Muslim-Christian solidarity icon.<\/p>\n

In his Jolo high school days, his Tausug heart and eyes began to conceptualize his unique painting style.<\/p>\n

His eyes studied the Tausug \u201cukkil\u201d patterns found in artifacts.<\/p>\n

As he strolled the beaches, he said, the sensuous wavelets entranced him.<\/p>\n

The flowing motions of the \u201cpangalay\u201d folk dance bewitched him.<\/p>\n

Together they were used as his constant motif of his artworks.<\/p>\n

If some European masters have their cubism, he nurtured his \u201cTawasilism\u201d as his own school of art.<\/p>\n

By the time he was in college back in Zamboanga City, first in a trade school and then the Western State University taking up architecture, he said he was \u201cvoraciously reading about the great art masters \u2013 Picasso, Rembrandt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut none of them influenced me, you cannot see their styles in my artworks,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cI studied them only to learn the basics and principles of aesthetics\u201d, he said. \u201cWhen you master that knowledge, then you command the power of beauty in your brush strokes.\u201d<\/p>\n

True beauty, he said, is wherever it is found \u2013 in the environment, people, or art.<\/p>\n

An artist, he explained, can paint a fighting scene, like the famous \u201cBattle of Guernica,\u201d without arousing anger and aggression in people who view it but instead experience the sense of humanity that is in all of us.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is what I try to do in all my artworks\u201d, Tawasil said.<\/p>\n

His first oil masterpiece was \u201cThe Burning of Jolo\u201d. It shows a woman looking up in pain and anguish, carrying her little son who clutched and clawed her in fright, her dead husband by her side, bullet shells filling the ground, two bombs falling and Jolo\u2019s workaday things burning \u2013 but almost no blood flowing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is solemn,\u201d Tawasil explained.<\/p>\n

That sense of \u2013 and appeal for \u2013 struggling humanity and dignity is present in all his paintings. It transcends in his minor works of Tausug fish vendors proffering with closed eyes his fishes to another of his masterpiece, the historic American colonial era \u201cBattle of Bud Dahu\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tawasil is a prolific painter. He has participated in 50 art exhibits in the Philippines and some other countries, receiving several national and international awards and commendations.<\/p>\n

Contrasting to the present-day bloody conflicts overwhelming his native Sulu, Tawasil sprung from a family background of peace-making and artful craft.<\/p>\n

His father was a technical adviser of former President Ferdinand Marcos, responsible for negotiating for the \u201creturn to the fold of the law\u201d of many hardcore Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) commanders.<\/p>\n

His father was also deputy vice-governor of Sulu during the Marcos regime.<\/p>\n

Tawasil said his father owned a prosperous fishing business operating from out of the province.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father was a peace builder, I inherited that consciousness from him\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy talent and inclination for art I inherited from my mother\u2019s father,\u201d he said. \u201cMy grandfather loved to carve decorative figures in parts of his house, in things like the scabbard of bolos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tawasil\u2019s mother was the thirteenth wife of his father.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father treated all his wives equally\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the fruit does not fall far from the tree.<\/p>\n

In his response upon receiving the Peaceweaver Award, he said: \u201cPeace should not be chased by the gain of an award, but since the Interreligious Solidarity for Peace has put its trust on meto advocate peace through my art, I am humbled by this trust. Then I, and my art, shall move on to build peace to be enjoyed by all for tomorrow\u2019s generations, as well as generations to come after shall not perish due to our neglect in building a better tomorrow for them\u201d.<\/p>\n

He still has dream paintings hoping to do \u2013 including one about the Jabidah massacre, the ancient trip of Sulu sultan Batara to China to visit the emperor there where he died and left a mark that survives to this day, and the recent years\u2019 ill-fated raid of Sabah by the Rajah Muda of the Sulu sultanate.<\/p>\n

As with some of his canvasses, they will be visual documentaries that once upon a time the Tausug society was prosperous and peaceful, a paradise to regain, Tawasil said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ZAMBOANGA CITY\u00a0— In February 1974, the proud town of Jolo was totally burned down and bombed to oblivion. On the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":193357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lifestyle","mauthors-rey-luis-banagudos","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}