It isn’t every day you get to hear about how art is life-giving from a man who is dying. That’s exactly what we were fortunate enough to encounter at the Modern and Contemporary Art Festival last July, with Robert Alejandro, co-founder of Papemelroti. His art has not only shaped the family business’ brand, but has also given color and form to the sentiments of many Filipinos in current social issues, through his widely followed Facebook page.
Most significantly, his art has been the lifeline–seven years and counting—that has sustained him in his journey with cancer.
In hindsight, that our session that afternoon would not require any materials other than pen and paper, and that he told us this with a light smile, was a sign that the next two hours would not be just another workshop like we are usually prepared to facilitate. Our bag of art materials sat untouched on the side of the room. The simplicity was an invitation to be present, to listen, and to answer the call to be heard.
As we listened to the quiet activity of drawing every detail of a leather bag, British artist Leon Kossoff came to mind. In decades of visiting the National Museum, he described his drawing practice as a time to be a student, learning to draw each time sat with a painting to draw from it. Robert was simple too, in embracing a profound perspective: to draw was to appreciate everything he could see. It was to take time and be present with the things he saw in his life. To see it for its beauty, its light, and its shadows; to relish all he saw for himself.
I can only imagine how much effort it takes to be present to yourself when you are dying. He did acknowledge his tumor at one point. His voice lowers and says: “Right now, honestly, I have — I actually feel the tumor 24/7.” This is almost said in passing, because he continues, voice rising, to get to his main point: “But then Christmas is coming up, and I want to have a whole line of figurines for Papemelroti. So every day that I feel good, I go this clay place and I’m alone there, making, and it’s literally heaven for me.”
I was moved by how vulnerable and raw that moment of expression was, going from acknowledging a tumor to a series of clay figurines for Christmas. I think for a moment where the pain might be in his body. Is that why his arms are often folded across his torso? Does he get tired while standing up? How much more difficult was it to look at the bag and draw today? Is that why each sentence he utters is full of life? Questions aside, all I could be sure of in that moment was the gravity of how present he was with us, and with all the spirit of art his soul had in tow. It was his life’s work.
Robert recalled what went on in his mind after the fateful doctor’s appointment that led to the exhibit he had mounted just a few paces from the room we were in:
…I wasn’t talking, and when I got home, I painted all of those things… And I never did that kind of drawing, ‘yung abstract. But then when this cancer happened, and then the doctor practically told me, “Robert, you don’t have a future, unless you do chemotherapy…” and I believe, that if I do chemotherapy, even more, wala na akong future. So I felt that I didn’t have a future, I can let go of the past, what will I do now? And that’s what I did.
He also reassures, that he was, in fact, not angry in the process:
There was no anger, or what. It’s like … “Okay!” ‘Yun nga, in my head: “No more past! No more future! Ngayon ko lang ‘to gagawin!” I didn’t know what was happening. But I felt very good that I did it. I didn’t wallow… and parang after I did it, it was like, “Yay. I have something to give MoCAF.” (laughter). Done!”
Robert calls drawing, and by extension all the art he practises, his superpower. “I think that’s one of the things about art. Even in the most dire of circumstances, it connects us with our sense of agency. We can make something. We can write something. We can move,” Gina says this with the weight of experience working with people in the aftermath of trauma, conflict, and disaster, around the world. Particularly working with children and adults who work with children, she has seen different ways that the arts become a superpower for those who need tools to express their way through to healing.
When was the last time you saw yourself, or someone else, moved by art? Notice, next time, because it’s a superpower. The stories are everywhere: at the end of a film that made you laugh and cry, in a classroom with a child learning to draw, in rehab, with the piano man at the mall, with your best friend’s wholehearted attempt at a new hobby, in the music that makes your brain blossom with a core memory.
In that room at Fairmont Hotel, I was reminded of all the moments I have been witness to this superpower. Even with the work I do which is more ‘behind the scenes’, I am changed by encounters like this, where witnessing and documenting a session holds space for people who exchange stories and add to a humbling energy of vulnerability within community.
The last part of the exchange is one that needs no commentary.
GA: … looking at the illustrations, naisip ko ‘yung favorite ko na illustrator. She says: drawing is a way of looking, and looking is a way of loving [paraphrased from Wendy MacNaughton]. And I can see how much you love your life. And it’s beautiful to see how you captured so much of your travels, and you’re actually also sharing that way of looking and loving with the people around you. So that is a huge legacy. That’s something that I think will remain, for always, in people’s hearts. Just that experience and process of making and looking and loving. Just wanted to respond to that.
RA: Parang you encapsulated my whole life. Because all my life, that’s what I’ve been doing. ‘Yung parang — I’m sorry I’m emotional — I don’t know if you know, but I’ve always done workshops, specially for children, in extreme poverty, in North Cemetery, under the bridge… it gives me so much joy. And it makes me so sad that I can’t do it anymore right now. So, you know — and not every day I can do art because there’s pain — so I really relish the days that I can create. It’s really a celebration of life. That’s how I feel. I know I’m going to die drawing.
It is humbling to listen to someone talk about death this way. It makes death less fearsome, and brings it closer to the ordinary. Art changes the way we see, the way we hold, and the way we live life.
“Looking is loving,” I remembered, as I went to Robert’s space again to look at his art. They were all beautiful, with a quiet juxtaposition of fragility and vitality — perhaps much like his life at this point — and I realized that in a way, he mirrors the truth we sometimes wrestle with when it comes to the human experience.
As I stood in front of Robert’s paintings, I remember the story of the Little Prince, the part where he chooses his rose. I, too, took some time to choose a piece of flora from the work Robert had on the walls, loving all of them as a collective but also asking myself to imagine which one I resonate with the most. Drawn first to the open fan of purpley-blue that reached high across the paper, I chose. Then I noticed more things to love: the shade of blue was different from the others. There were a few buds and a few bloomed flowers together, which tell me that life is persevering and new all at once. There were also roots in this one, which reminded me of drawings and ceramics pieces I made when I was a fresh undergraduate art student.
Through that exercise of imagination I realized that perhaps, the act of choice is an art too - it’s making or shaping what I see, the way I participate in a moment, and the way I respond to the expression of life I’d just encountered.
The work is precious because it will always remind me that Robert made a choice to live the way he does because of his art. And in a way, this experience has shown me that the art he made and shared with all of us, has chosen him too. This relationship between creator and their created work reminds me I am not separate from the things I do and what I create. And it is this relationship that also connects me with others.
As a response to Robert’s sharing of his life, Gina invited the room to lovingly look at the series of his paintings again through images flashed on the screen, and to start associating words to each one. Choosing words for each one. The deeper invitation was to create a poem from those words, and then share it, whether read out loud or handed as a piece of paper to Robert himself after the session.
It could have been easy to choose to respond in anguish or despair after that doctor’s appointment. Perhaps, it would have been completely valid for some of you — and that’s okay too. But in this story, I acknowledge and celebrate how for Robert, his superpower gave him the agency to choose what was best for himself. I saw again how making art has this way of inviting us to choose differently, and empower us to choose what is most life-giving.
Beautiful writing and recollection of what transpired during that afternoon at MoCAF. <3 Thank you for writing this! One can see the joy of Sir Robert in making art all his life.
Beautiful, Adi!!!