W

e featured Leonardo Bing Cariño's Indigenous Madonnas on GruffDraft™ online magazine not too long ago, and already the now prolific painter has another notch of a one-man exhibit on his belt. Entitled Bai Nu Galang (Women of the Brass), the 12-piece collection of his trademark enamel-on-canvas paintings (this time with gold leaf added) feature the Maguindanao woman.

No less than filmmaker and writer Teng Mangansakan introduces Leonardo Cariño's new series here:

"In Bai Nu Galang, Leonardo Cariño captures the domestic life of Maguindanaon women — from cooking, weaving, to teaching children read the Qur'an — with each painting punctuated by a [piece or pieces of] brassware that symbolizes a people's cultural pride and ancestry. Using a conflagration of vibrant colors, Cariño elevates the banal and mundane to render them as an all important labor that has sustained the Maguindanaon throughout centuries of glorious albeit tumultuous history. But with strife taking its toll: most of the brass, kept by families from generation to generation, are no longer there. They have become trophies of war, their weight a burden to the Maguindanaon who have endured the hardships brought upon by decades of war. Through Cariño’s careful hands, the artist has brought them back at the center of his canvas, thematizing what is now absent as the permeating presence that will remain the Maguindanaon’s source of pride."

The following dates and venues have been set for the Bai Nu Galang exhibit:

November 19-December 12, 2018
11th Flr Community Center
Ateneo de Davao University
Davao City, Philippines

December 15-22, 2018
Sharif Kabungsuan Festival
Cotabato City, Philippines

February 2019
National Arts Month Celebration
MSU-IIT, Iligan City, Philippines