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gerard d. baja on the colonial vertigo of philippine history:

my work is about our national and cultural identity. it is also a short description of philippine colonial history. i used cut out images of filipino ethnic dancers symbolizing our roots, a picture of valentin de los santos, the leader or the supremo of lapiang malaya - an underground revolutionary cult with a representation of liwanag, warhol's image of 'three elvis' as an american imperialist icon, and pictures of cabaret girls taken from a tabloid magazine symbolizing our present day situation of taboo colonial mentality that the westerners introduced to us.

the images follow a circular movement to emphasize the vertigos history of our people from the ethnic dancers, to the underground revolution, and to the present day cabaret girls. the gradual changes of our modern society followed an american standard way of barbaric command and conquer type of warfare through the depiction of the American dream in the western media to influence and to feed the minds of our nation and erase the true identity of our culture.

text by the artist

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