BRANDEAD | The Fooled Heroes

BRANDEAD | The Fooled Heroes
by Ma. Cecilia Locsin-Nava, Ph.D.

Looking for an exhibit that combines all four concepts of visual arts as an arrangement of lines, shapes, and color; a projection of the artist’s personality; a statement of the philosophy the age that produced it that communicates meanings beyond the artist and the period that produced it?

Then, Edbon Sevilleno’s Brandead: Collage, Montage, and Installation at the Orange Gallery in Mandalagan is the show for you. A pun on the word branded, Brandead drives home the artist’s statement that we are so brand conscious (dead na dead sa brand) they not only “ dictate and dominate our lives, they “define us.” Hence, the exhibit’s logo of a bar code with a padlock juxtaposed with the artist’s photo.



One of the luckier ones who hit it big in the world of advertising abroad, Sevilleno nevertheless has chosen to articulate the life of quiet desperation of the overseas Filipino worker (OFW) in Brandead, a visual diary in two parts of his18 years in Saudi Arabia that focuses on the effects of the Diaspora on the Filipino worker. For sale are 10 nonfigurative paintings on the lobby and the third floor while a number of installations and assemblages on the second floor are not, since the artist intends them for a traveling exhibit.

The latter consists of non-traditional art materials that the artist has collected (price tags, luggage labels, passports, blacked out pin up photos, computer mouse etc.) which proves that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. These are arranged in unconventional ways – attached to the ceiling, hang from a clothesline, closeted in dead corners, inside glass bottles, encased in steel cages, etc, all accompanied by intriguing titles (Orgasmic Creativity, Chained Art, Mga Balatyagon sa Garapon, Duha Cinco).


Coins strewn on the stairs of the gallery introduce the theme of the exhibit. As one reaches the landing one sees mouse traps appropriately labeled Lagpit lined up on the wall juxtaposed with one of three paintings on the lobby entitled, Pigos Uno. The message is clear - the prospect of earning well entices OFWs to go abroad. Once there, they are often entrapped as their passports are confiscated and they end up exploited and oppressed either by their recruiters or employers. This stark reality is driven home by a penciled figure against a white background surrounded by a sea of vibrant oranges and yellows.

While dressing up for the opening of Brandead, I watched a movie set in Dubai where one character played by Michael de Mesa succinctly expresses the burden of the Filipino worker: “That’s what we do - we serve the foreigner in our work place and our families at home.“ For OFWS often sacrifice personal freedom and contend with loneliness and alienation to serve as walking ATMS of countless dependents whose insatiable appetite for imported consumer goods drives them to work themselves to the bone even at the risk of life and limb. This is best. Illustrated by 50 remaining OFWs who still have to be rescued from the war-torn Gaza strip and.one balikbayan last Christmas who admitted in a NAIA interview that she annually sends18 balikbayan boxes to families and friends since it is expected of her until recession in the States forced her to cut the number down to half.

In their wake, OFWS leave behind many dysfunctional families for no amount of Nokia , Ipods, Ericcson cell phones, Blackberry, Apple laptops, Lacoste T-shirts and Coach bags can make up for their absence.

Propping up the sagging Philippine economy with annual remittances of no less than 12 billion dollars, OFWs are the real work horses of this country. Nevertheless the mass lay-offs due to the economic downturn reveals that for all our politicians’ rhetoric about their being our “modern day heroes” the Philippine government has done nothing for our OFWs in return for their service. Subjected to indignities like having their personal effects ransacked on their way out of the country, OFWS discover upon their return there are no government programs to reintegrate them into the Philippine economy.

Thus in the lyrics of a song entitled GINAGONG BAYANI (Fooled Hero) played by a band in Riyadh that Sevilleno jams with:

Sa amin ang hirap
Inyo ang sarap
Tuwang tuwa sa trono
Pamilya ko’y watak watak
Buwaya sa gobyerno
Anong silbi nyo?
Pinahihirapan lang
Manggagawaing Pilipino

(To us is the hardship
To you is the fun
Happy to be on the throne
While our family divides
Crocodiles in the government
Of what use are you?
You only make things hard
For the Filipino worker.

Kami ang ginagong bayani
Sa kuko ng mga mapang api
Kinasangkapan lang nila kami
Upang makamit kanilang
Minimithi….

(We are the fooled heroes
In the clutches of oppressors
Who simply exploit us
So they can attain
Their desires).


Kalahi (Tunog Pinoy) The band members is composed of OFW's based in Riyadh KSA.


As a visiting professor in South Korea in 1998, I learned that when OFWS ran into trouble they got more help from the local church than from the Philippine Embassy.

That is why I thought it apt that during the ribbon cutting on January 3, Sevilleno drew on the floor of the gallery a human figure which we all stepped over in order to view the opened exhibit. Enter the realm of the doormats of the world!

Square Caves by Edbon Sevilleno

The Subversive Painting of an OFW (Review)
By Ma. Cecilia Locsin-Nava | Inquirer Visayas | Febuary 27, 1998

Artist are generally perceived as free spirits who don’t give a damn about society thinks of them. Hence , the stereotyped concept of the artist as a rebel.

But what if the artist lives in a repressive society, punitive society that limits his freedom?

In his one-man show titled “Square Caves,” which Edbon Sevilleno held in January at the Art Association of Bacolod gallery, he showed how artist subvert the limitations imposed by the conservative mid-Eastern society where he works to express what he feels.

A highly prolific artist who has been based in Riyadh since 1989, Sevilleno’s works as art director of AP7 Riyadh, a Middle East based advertising agency affiliated with McCann Erickson Worldwide.

Initially working at 17 with Blim’s Interior Design in Manila, Sevilleno was a cartoonist contributor of the comic strip ‘Borjok’ for the Tabloid Masa, the sister publication of Malaya during the Marcos years, animator for Chito Roño’s Optifex animation company,children’s book illustrator for Phoenix Publications.

In between jobs, Sevilleno studied Fine Arts at La Consolacion College where he met fellow artists with whom he exhibited in several group shows at the AAB gallery.

Over the last four years, he has consistently come back to Bacolod with a harvest of paintings for his annual show.



In what to date was his most impressive show. Sevilleno employed in “Square Caves” collage and computer generated images from an Apple Mac to achieve effects ordinary paint cannot produce to tackle the problems of the overseas Filipino worker - low regard, loneliness, uncertainty, shabby treatment and curtailment of personal freedom in an alien culture which, despite the relative affluence and the high pay the Filipino enjoy, gnaws.

These are themes hinted at by the artist in past shows. At one point, Sevilleno depicted the Filipino wearing a mask, living a double life in that outwardly conforms to the strictures of the conservative, traditional society in which he lives inwardly he chafes under these restrictions.

Hence the title of the show, “Square” standing to the modern structures which affluent mid-Eastern countries can afford to put up but which contrast sharply with what the artist perceives their backward (cavelike) mentality since to this day, he notes that women who commit adultery are publicly stoned to death.


“ Tribute to Gauguin” | Collage and Computer Graphics | By Edbon Sevilleno

Blotted out images
Thus, a recurrent motif in his paintings is the blotted out images, generally by women in advertisements, and even in a classic masterpieces in “ Tribute to Gauguin” where the figure of Gauguin’s vahine is blotted out.




In painting titled “No Spirits Allowed,” “Nar-is,” and “Barbie Dull”, however Sevilleno shows how even relatively innocuous pictures like those of the Blessed Virgin and the infant Jesus, a woman exercising and a doll are censored.

In “Kirida,” a clipping of Botero’s painting is likewise covered, but the artist sneaks in, showing a woman’s dismembered parts “safety” in abstract forms.

In “Obra Baka Baka” where the painter painted himself onto the picture with caption “Makinang Laman,” Sevilleno shows how the exigencies of the Philippine economy has made many OFW’s automations who work their heads off for families they left behind.

Significantly to drive home this message, superimposed on the artist’s image are what seem like hieroglyphics which on closer inspection, are actually the inside of a machine.

The loneliness and isolation suffered by the OFW’s are tackled in “Sulo Kulo” (Head Only) from the vernacular expression “ imo ulo, imo kulo” (literally, your head, your responsibility”) and in “Our Daily Bread”.

In the latter painting, employing the technique of a picture within a picture, Sevilleno draws on one side of the canvas a cartoon-like figure of a man praying before his meal. Instead of food in his plate, one finds an unopened letter which the recipient contemplates perhaps in dread over some piece of incoming bad news.

Meanwhile, on another side of the canvas the word “painful” in a clipping has been blotted in a vain attempt to block out its reality.

“Size B shoes” and ”Made in Italy” throw into relief how our insatiable appetite for imported pasalubong drives OFW’s to earn the precious dollars that sustain our demand. Given all these, how does he cope?

In “ Taghol” (Bark) Sevilleno shows a headless man in a straitjacket to drive home the feeling of being hemmed in by religious watchdogs that keep watch over public morals. However, on another side of the picture, the artist showed his disgust by printing the cussword “Deputa.”

Sevilleno admits that whatever negative feelings Filipinos have about the treatment they receive and restrictions they suffer in Saudi Arabia, they have to keep themselves.

Thus, no matter how muted the protest, they dare not show their works in public for fear of jeopardizing their jobs. This is why he and his fellow-artists hold exhibit in their private houses.

That time hangs heavy on their hands while waiting for their annual reprieve home is communicated by “Year Contract” where the artist made a visual allusion to Salvador Dali’s melting clock to express his angst.


Square Caves Opening Circa 1998, from right the artist, Dr. Cecilia Nava-Locsin and a certain Bacolod City councilor cuts the ribbons.