Feleo (HB)

For more than 47 years, from I977, when Roberto Bulatao Feleo created his first work, The Painted Man by the River, to 2024, when his series of four wall-bound, carved-wood pieces, Life and Afterlife, was exhibited at the Paris Asian Art Fair, he has been limning the various aspects of being Filipino–an archipelagic race shaped by, among others, its history, myths, traditions, and the quaint nuances of a diverse but connected way of life that reflect the national experience.

He has so far produced more than 200 works. The compendium includes two major works: Tau-Tao: The Bagobo Myth of the Afterlife (I999) and The Myth of the Basi Revolt (2016). All are speckled with icons, the running motifs of Feleo’s sculptural narratives. The icons spring from Philippine history, mythology, and the artist’s intense imagination. Akin to visual acrobatics, they flip over and around with agility and complexity such that, as art historian Patrick Flores observes, they at once transpose history to mythology and vice versa.

But beneath Feleo’s artful deft lies depth, though he is the last to take himself seriously. Occasionally, Mickey Mouse makes a walk-in appearance in his works. But you need 20/20 vision to spot him.
-Anita Feleo

Description: 311 pages : color illustrations ;  31 x 28.5 cm

Language: English

ISBN: 978-621-05-0077-6