Here is my recent acrylic painting on a 36″x48″ canvas: Ang Bai, Buaya, kag ang Kahoy sg Kaluluwa. In Visayan the phrase means The Woman, Crocodile and Tree of the Soul.
Small 11×17 prints are available for purchase at my art shop page.
For me, this painting was done from messages — dreams from the ancestors. They come with imagery. They also come with feelings — wrenching tears and sobs, and deep deep love.
As a work of love, it is also a journey back to what part of me I inherit from my ancestors, something that was taken away by colonized history — annihilated villages, language and traditions. Women devoured by crocodiles because they were priestess leaders of their barangays. Leny Strobel calls this larger process of returning to self pagbabalikloob. A clinical, english word for that process would be decolonization. The english term doesn’t capture the truth, beauty, and love that is within that process. Pagbabalikloob, for me, does.
It’s time for Filipinos to remember the White Buwaya because he represents the Light aspect of the crocodile.
Greed and corruption are shadow or dark aspects of the crocodile and all that modern filipinos remember because of the wounds of Spanish colonization. How can we transition from this mindset? It takes service that comes from Love and Abundance, not Fear and Lack.
The light aspects of the crocodile power animal are power, courage, warrior-ship, protection, fertility.
Our white buwaya has a name. It is Nunoy.
Ang Bai, Buaya, kag ang Kahoy sg Kaluluwa (Visayan phrase that means The Woman, Crocodile and Tree of the Soul).
Acrylic on Canvas. 36"w x 48"h. by Omehra Sigahne, AKA Perla Paredes Daly
And here is the painting on the cover for the book it was intended for:
The book cover is about overcoming colonial oppression and trauma. The book intro explains the historical tragedy about the babaylan and how the friars fed her to the crocodiles.
Here are a couple of reviews:
“Back from the Crocodile’s Belly is a book of power — a record of severe struggle to hang on to our soul and its unbroken link to the womb of our ancestral world wherever the Filipino may be. Dedicated to the babaylanes — our shamanic ancestors, many fed to crocodiles by the Spanish conquistador in the attempt to wipe out their world — this book offers a harvest of homecoming. Here the lived experiences of our kababayan carving expatriate lives in “the belly of the beast” links arms with the continuing struggle in the motherland to keep alive what it still remembers of that ancestral world. With passion, wit and grace, racial memory propels us to evolve as we meet ourselves and link hands in that blessed moment “before the invention of violent hierarchies and the beauty-killing empires, machines, markets, standing armies, corporations, and governments that now threaten life on the planet.”
— Sylvia Mayuga, thrice winner, Philippine National Book Award, journalist, essayist, poet, and documentary filmmaker“This powerful collection of essays is part of a crescendo of voices emerging from the struggles of decolonization, the misunderstandings of postcolonialism, and the search for indigenization. It beautifully exemplifies two important aspects of this emergence and assertion of indigenous voices for the future: the presence of a uniquely Indigenous voice of inquiry, a voice beyond the confines of established academic discourses, and the importance of this voice for Philippine cultures and humanity beyond.”
— Jurgen W. Kremer, PhD. in Clinical Psychology and co-author of Ethnoautobiography: Stories and Practices of Unlearning Whiteness, Decolonization, Uncovering Ethnicities
Back from the Crocodile’s Belly. Edited by S. Lily Mendoza and Leny Mendoza Strobel.
Published by Center for Babaylan Studies. You can order the book at amazon.com.
Contributors: Grace Nono, Nenita Pambid, Michael Gonzalez, Lane Wilcken, Christine Muyco, Jane Alfonso, Maria Ferrera, Margarita Garcia, Jim Perkinson, Tera Maxwell, S. Lily Mendoza, Mila Anguluan Coger, and Perla Daly.
Yes, I have an essay in here, too. It’s the last one in the book and is entitled: “Pagbabalikloob, Cyberactivism, and Art: Babaylan Provocations and Creative Responses.” In it I share art and experiences.
In the intro of the book, editor S. Lily Mendoza explains:
“Finally, Perla Daly’s “Pagbabalikloob, Cyberactivism, and Art” narrates the author’s cultural and political awakening in the homeland, beginning in her college days, that led her to search for ways to address more broadly the problem of colonial mentality among Filipinos. As part of her own process of decolonization, she tells of how she was drawn to the history and stories of the Babaylan through the pain of encountering the negative stereotyping of Filipinas online when she first attempted to find sources on the internet that could help her discover her ancestral roots. In this essay, she tells of her remarkable journey in creating the website, Bagong Pinay at newfilipina.com, her serendipitous meeting with various Filipino women that would inspire her in her search for ancestry (and that would in turn be inspired by her courage and passion), her establishing of two online listserve communities, Pagbabalikloob and Babaylan, and her work of organizing a nationwide conference for Filipino American Women’s Network (FAWN) in 2005. In many ways, these amazing accomplishments are what helped seed the founding of what is now the Center for BabaylanStudies. How the Babaylan spirit figured in all of Daly’s endeavors permeates her narration and her babaylan-inspired work — a glowing testament to the ingenuity of creative imagination in reclaiming indigenous consciousness.
If you’re interested in ordering a small print of the painting click to my Etsy page.
Originally published at newfilipina.com | bagongpinay | Shifting & transforming consciousness with new perspective & ancient traditions..
