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.