About the Event
When did you last hear someone say, “Peksman! Cross my heart and hope to die!”? Words usually uttered to stress a point, to make a pledge, or to seal a deal during the pre-social media age may be lost on a millennial now. But whether heard or unheard, said or unsaid, people continue to swear peksman in its myriad forms as they lure others into believing in their truth.
In his Peksman! Exhibit, artist and University of the Philippines Fine Arts professor Marco Ruben T. Malto II paints popular perceptions gained from past and present propagandas as he calls for utmost caution in discerning fact from fiction. In a “post-truth” period with people governing for the pleasure of the few and in the service of the self, this exhibit exposes fabricated facts that have relentlessly fooled the Filipino public into accepting them as the truth. To say peksman is to promise; a popular practice when campaigning to win elections or in popularizing views to further one’s political career and other self-interests. The brazen, greedy and egocentric politicians persevere in deceiving their believers to gain popularity or sympathy, always appealing to the power of peksman in their ever-timely propagandas. Via manic dissemination of a myth, a dictum, a slogan, a hearsay, an urban legend, or “fake news”, propagandists bend the truth for political gain, when not corroborating ludicrous lies for rise to power.
In presenting Peksman!, Malto re-examines the value of peksman in today’s blurry reality. The storyteller in Malto’s evocative pieces speaks subtly yet piercingly of the artist’s take on the nation’s burning issues. Peksman! opens on 26 Nov 2017, Sunday, 4pm at Sining Kamalig Art Gallery, Upper Ground Floor, Ali Mall, Araneta Center, Quezon City. The exhibit will run from Nov. 26 – Dec. 15, 2017.