Camiguin Heritage Houses as Living Museums
…Kamiguingnons are proud of their multi-layered culture and history, and have now started to acknowledge the pre-Hispanic part of their culture. Thus, homes built during the Spanish era adorned with Okkil art are now referred to as "antellian" instead of "Spanish", to give equal credit to the architectural influence of Moslem Mindanao. Enigmata, a bed-and-breakfast facility (www.enigmata.tk ) managed by an artist for artists, advocates for this multi- layered view of Camiguin art, music and architecture…—Camiguin from Within by Violeta Hughes-Davis
"Okkil art and contemporary art might appear to be contradictory. Okkil art reached its peak as stylized expression due to a religious prohibition against representational drawing or painting. It wa an ingenuous solution to prohibition. But in today’s liberated society that upholds freedom of artistic expression, Okkil’s basic philosophy does not seem to stand ground. There is danger that Okkil art would be exoticized and relegated to the merely decorative. Yet the symbolism that inheres in Okkil art goes beyond the decorative. Okkil Art carries with it rich cultural meanings like nobility, power, prestige, refinement, and religious nuances. The challenge for today’s artists is to explore the use of Okkil’s cultural and artistic potentials as a transformative force in society.
Already, Enigmata’s Okkil project, with the support of the National Commission for the Culture and Arts (NCCA) and the Office of he Mambajao Vice Mayor Primitivo Espinas, has reached out and touched based with hundreds of students, teachers, local floks and public officials. It has raised the level of awareness of Camiguignons of their rich cultural heritage; that the familiar “antiques” (a term used to refer to the ancestral houses probably as a result of tourists’ inquiries about them) speak to them of history that more than meets the eye. It tells them that they are children of noble and ingenuous forebears that communed with and were inspired by nature and aspired to the beautiful and the divine. Okkil Art, so endemic in Camiguin, concretely reminds then this— everyday."— Okkil Art: Carving Out Our Artistic Heritage by Cris Rollo
The Okkil indigenous art is found in ancestral homes elsewhere in the Philippines. But in prewar homes in Mindanao, these were more ornate and flamboyant, and were integrated into building structure. The innovative architecture ingenuously ornamented and cooled down the houses. The carve wood boarded up the areas above the windows nearest the ceiling. These were also found along the eaves, and, in a certain manner, provided ventilation for hot air to escape.
The designs diffused the rays of the strong equatorial sun and brought in lace- like specs of light into the interior. At night, the cool air and changing skylight peeped through the same carved patterns. Inside the houses, the Okkil art works serve as room dividers, nearest the ceiling, that allowed air to freely circulate.
Camiguin Island, which is located at the tip of Northern Mindanao, escaped the war relatively unscathed. Amid towering centuries-old acacia rain trees, Okkil Art, in all its glory, still adorns and cools ancestral homes. —Remembering the Okkil Artists by Maria Virginia Y. Morales
OKKIL POSTCARDS may be bought at the products section.
