Time makes ruins of us all; and it is the fate of things that they crumble and fade. For murals, this truth is more immediate. The steady encroachment of light, water and other veritable conditions make it certain that art, or what is left of the people who commenced it, withers into obscurity. This reason underscores the vital duty of conservators. The likes of Ms. Tats Rejante-Manahan, heritage conservation expert and board member of ICOMOS, constantly race to preserve and restore important heritage assets that have been slowly eroded by the microclimate.
On November 8, Friday, Ms. Tats graced our university and delivered a talk about mural restoration and its relevance in “Preserving the Past for the Future.” Entitled: Re-Paint, Overpaint and Restore, students of DAFA and other colleges witnessed the meticulous world of mural restoration, and what it takes for a mission of this kind to be accomplished.
“When you restore” Ms. Tats begins, “you do not re-paint and you do not overpaint — you only restore.” In attempting to restore an artwork, the preservation of its historical and cultural integrity is paramount. The lecture makes it a key principle that restoration does not attempt to overwrite the passage of time but to maintain what is original. This allows the piece to continue its purpose for an extended span of time. She adds that every mark on a crumbling mural, and every dent on the canvas where it is painted over, carries historical significances whose alteration or “re-interpretation” is commensurate with its erasure. The responsibility of the restorer, then, is not to impose their vision upon a historical artwork, but to allow its authenticity to reemerge, enabling future generations a glimpse of its form in as much as the painter envisioned it in his creation.
To this end, Ms. Tats makes us realize that the practice of restoring murals is not solitary. Since they are painted on a wall, and these walls are erected with a particular specification, a conservator has to collaborate with architects, structural engineers, and scientists in an effort to handle the precision each work necessitates. A prominent landmark of her project in the island includes the St. Joseph the Worker Chapel, also known as the Angry Christ Church in Victorias Negros Occidental. Considered an Important Cultural Property, Ms. Tats was called in to assess the condition of the mural in order to facilitate its restoration. It would turn out that the painting of The Angry Christ, originally done by famed abstract expressionist Alfonso Ossorio, had already been painted over by a local artist attempting to restore it. With her team, Ms. Tats commenced to bring back the honor of Mr. Ossorio’s original piece.
At the conclusion of the lecture, Ms. Tats was joined in an open forum by another prominent art scholar, Ms. Viviana Riccelli, who has been busying the DAFA arts studio with a 4-day workshop on the introduction of the buon fresco, a technique where pigments are applied directly onto a freshly prepared layer of wet lime plaster. Few of the participants remained indifferent, as Ms. Riccelli was quick to point out the social importance of mural frescoes. In the ancient world, as it is today, murals have a function of capturing the spirit of the times, and informing an indecisive audience about events that they may be unaware. Street arts are the modern variant of this tradition; and it is in these performances that the drive for freedom and rebellion can be expressed.
As it stands, the delicate nature of the fresco technique can be likened to the instability of our histories: as the lime plaster sustains the pigments, we are reminded of the fragility of our past. In the same way that murals are weathered by elements, so too is our understanding of history, warped as it is by constant interpretation. The enduring presence of artifacts makes the case that, only in a collective agreement to preserve can we come to anchor a shared and unitary past. And it is the urgency of this shared obligation that Ms. Tats and Ms. Riccelli leaves us with.