Viva España and Long Live América is a diptych exhibition that straddles between two different locations in Metropolitan Iloilo chosen for their historical, cultural and political affinities.

Viva España will be presented at Museo Iloilo (built 1971) located in the capital city. It is the first government-sponsored museum outside Metro Manila. The museum houses an outstanding collection of Iloilo’s cultural heritage. But what makes Museo Iloilo significant is its around 300 pieces of religious artefacts and figures from home altars of old, prominent and devout Catholic families in the province. The Ilonggos’ generous donations of Catholic material culture firmly and eloquently attest to the influence of 400 years of Spanish rule in the Philippines on the Visayan region and its people.

On October 5, 1889, Maria Christina, then Queen Regent of Spain, raised the status of the town to the Royal City of the South due to Iloilo’s economic development during the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1896, the Queen Regent named Iloilo “La Muy Noble Ciudad,” or “The Most Noble City,” in appreciation of the Ilonggos allegiance to Spain, and their chivalry to defend the “Queen City of the South” against the surge of the Philippine Revolution.

This section of the diptych is an attempt to “colonize” the space of the museum, retaining some selected pieces from its collection, and intervene in its present narrative.

Long Live América will be presented at Balay Sueño Annex. Balay Sueño, a 1940s ancestral house located at the corner of Benedicto- Washington Streets, Jaro, Iloilo, was built by Don Modesto Ledesma, an haciendero who served as a mayor of Jaro in the 1920s. Once a separate city, it was merged with Iloilo City in the 1940s during the American colonial administration of the Philippines under its policy of Benevolent Assimilation. Jaro plays an important role for the Roman Catholic Church in this part of the Christian nation. It is where the Archdiocese of Jaro, the Metropolitan jurisdiction that encompasses the provinces of Antique, Guimaras, Iloilo, and Negros Occidental, is headquartered.

While this section of the diptych exhibition reflects the country’s American colonial history with snippets of Hollywood, cinema, American fashion, and America as a super power, it also attempts at self-reflexivity on the Filipinos’ love-hate relationship with America.

Norberto Roldan (b. 1953, Roxas City, Philippines) founded the Black Artists in Asia in 1986 and the Visayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference (VIVA ExCon) in 1990 both in Bacolod City. He was VIVA ExCon’s artistic director in 1990, 1992 and 2018. He also co-founded Green Papaya Art Projects in 2000 and has remained its artistic director until today.

Roldan is a practicing visual artist and is represented in several landmark surveys like New Art from Southeast Asia, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (1992), No Country: Contemporary Art for South/Southeast Asia, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum (2012); Between Declarations & Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia Since the 19th Century, National Gallery Singapore (2015); SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, National Art Centre Tokyo and Mori Art Museum (2017); and, Passion and Procession: Art of the Philippines, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2017).

Roldan recently moved his practice to Roxas City where he manages the projects of Green Papaya, among them the ongoing Shri Vishayas project. Shri Vishayas is a platform for the intersections of indigenous, rural, and contemporary cultures, and is a program of VIVA ExCon Antique 2022-2023.