Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs. Here is an artist who categorically refuses your neat classifications and your prefabricated theories. Rodel Tapaya, born in 1980 in Montalban in the province of Rizal, Philippines, paints canvases that function as topographical maps of the Filipino collective unconscious. His works do not merely illustrate folkloric narratives; they reveal the geological strata of cultural memory with surgical precision and devastating poetry.
Structural Anthropology of the Contemporary Myth
Tapaya’s work finds its deepest theoretical resonance in the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss, particularly his conception of myth as a language structuring unconscious thought. The artist himself acknowledges this influence when he states: “As Lévi-Strauss believed, myths are not simply a random construction of primitive beliefs or backward mentality, but pseudo-histories. They provide the raw material for a systematic analysis of the functioning of the unconscious mind” [1]. This theoretical approach structures his entire creative process from his early investigations on the myth of Bernardo Carpio: “As an imaginative and credulous young boy, I was convinced it was true” [2]. This approach fundamentally structures Tapaya’s artistic practice, which operates as an ethnographer of the contemporary imagination.
In Baston ni Kabunian, Bilang pero di Mabilang (2011), a work that earned him the prestigious Signature Art Prize, Tapaya deploys a remarkably sophisticated method of structural analysis of Philippine myths. The figure of Kabunian, the creator deity of the Northern Cordilleras of Luzon, becomes the organizing center of a complex network of binary relations: tradition/modernity, nature/culture, sacred/profane. The artist does not merely illustrate the myth; he decomposes its constituent elements to recompose them according to a logic that reveals the deep structures of contemporary Philippine thought.
This method directly engages with Lévi-Strauss’s structural anthropology in its ability to identify mythical invariants beyond cultural variations. Tapaya operates a true archaeology of symbolic forms, exhume the fundamental myths to update them in the post-colonial context. His technique of collage, systematically developed since 2011, mimetically reproduces the process of mythical bricolage as analyzed by the French anthropologist. Each visual fragment functions as a mytheme, a minimal unit of meaning that can be recombined according to new logics.
Tapaya’s approach, however, presents a major specificity in relation to Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism: it integrates the diachronic dimension of Philippine colonial history. His works reveal not only the universal structures of the human mind but also the specific transformations that these structures undergo under the impact of Spanish and American colonization and contemporary globalization. The Chocolate Ruins (2013) exemplifies this approach by showing how cacao, a colonial product par excellence, becomes an operator of mythical transformation that reveals the mutations of the Philippine imagination under the influence of global capitalism.
The artist also manipulates mythical temporalities according to a logic that evokes Lévi-Strauss’s analyses of wild thought. In Aswang Enters the City (2018), the mythological creatures aswang infiltrate the contemporary urban space, operating as symbolic mediators between the traditional order and modern chaos. This work reveals how archaic mythical structures continue to organize the perception of the present, particularly in the context of extrajudicial violence under the Duterte administration.
The collective dimension of this artistic production finally joins Lévi-Strauss’s conception of myth as a property of the group rather than the individual. Tapaya systematically works from informal ethnographic surveys conducted in the Philippine provinces, collecting local variants of traditional narratives. This method transforms the artist into a cultural mediator who reactivates collective narrative structures to make them accessible to urban generations disconnected from their rural roots. His workshop in Bulacan thus functions as a laboratory of applied anthropology where myths regain their original social function.
Architecture of the Soul: Psychoanalytic Dimension of the Work
Tapaya’s art also reveals deep resonances with the architecture of the unconscious as analyzed by Carl Gustav Jung, particularly in his theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious. The canvases of the Filipino artist function as contemporary mandalas, circular and complex structures that reveal the fundamental psychic tensions of post-colonial society. This psychoanalytic dimension manifests with particular acuity in his series of “Scrap Paintings” developed since 2019, where the obsessive accumulation of visual fragments evokes the mechanisms of condensation and displacement described by Freud in his analysis of dream processes.
The psychic topography of Tapaya’s works presents a remarkably coherent structure that evokes Jung’s cartography of the psyche. His dense compositions, where “no space is left empty,” reproduce the horror vacui characteristic of Philippine folk art but simultaneously reveal a deeper existential angst linked to post-colonial identity fragmentation. This compositional density is not merely decorative; it plastically translates the state of psychic saturation of a society bombarded with contradictory information and heterogeneous cultural references.
Jungian analysis helps us understand why the hybrid creatures of Tapaya exert such a powerful fascination on the contemporary viewer. The aswang, tikbalang and other entities of Philippine mythology that he represents function as archetypes of the Shadow, that repressed part of the collective psyche which resurfaces during times of social crisis. Hooded Witness (2019) perfectly illustrates this dynamic: the hooded figure, heir to the makapili collaborators of the Japanese occupation, reveals the persistence of mechanisms of informing and violence in contemporary Philippines. The work acts as a revealer of the repressed contents of the national consciousness.
Tapaya’s systematic use of animal metamorphoses fits into this psychoanalytic perspective. His characters who transform into pigs, crocodiles or monkeys actualize the archaic projection mechanisms described by Jung, where human drives crystallize in animal form. Multi-Petalled Beauty (2012) thus presents a transforming monkey that irresistibly evokes contemporary fantasies of body modification and genetic enhancement. The animal becomes the medium for a reflection on the narcissistic desires for perfection that permeate globalized consumer society.
The cathartic function of these representations is akin to the therapeutic mechanisms of Jung’s art therapy. By giving visible form to unconscious contents, Tapaya operates a genuine collective psychoanalytic cure. His canvases function as transitional spaces where Philippine society can confront its historical traumas without being overwhelmed by their emotional charge. The Sacrificial Lamb (2015) exemplifies this curative function by representing a fraternal sacrifice that simultaneously evokes pre-Christian traditions and the Christian Passion, allowing a symbolic integration of the different religious strata of Philippine culture.
The obsessive recurrence of certain motifs in Tapaya’s work finally reveals the existence of true complexes in the Jungian sense. The human skull, omnipresent in his compositions, functions as an affective core around which collective anxieties linked to violent death and impunity gravitate. This mortuary imagery is not merely macabre; it translates the necessary psychic integration of a society confronted with exceptional levels of violence.
Tapaya’s major innovation lies in his ability to transform these archaic psychic contents into contemporary plastic language. His collages mimetically reproduce the associative processes of the unconscious, where images connect according to non-rational logics that reveal deeper truths than simple conceptual analysis. This method places the artist in the lineage of the great explorers of the unconscious, from André Breton to Max Ernst, while retaining an irreducible Philippine cultural specificity.
The Postcolonial Epic of the Present
What fundamentally distinguishes Tapaya from other contemporary narrative painters is his unique ability to transform political news into epic material. His canvases do not describe; they transfigure. When he paints the extrajudicial executions of the Duterte administration in Aswang Enters the City, he does not produce classic militant art but a true cosmogony of contemporary power. The police metamorphosed into mythological creatures reveal how state violence is rooted in archaic imaginary structures that democratic modernity has never truly eradicated.
Tapaya’s approach aligns with the most penetrating analyses of the postcolonial condition. His works reveal how societies of the Global South navigate a disjointed space-time where several temporal regimes coexist simultaneously: the circular time of traditional myths, the linear time of Western modernity, and the accelerated time of contemporary globalization. This temporal polyrythmia structures his entire artistic production and gives it its aesthetic specificity.
His collage technique plastically reproduces this multiple temporality. In Instant Gratification (2018), the artist superimposes references to José Rizal, a 19th-century national hero, with images of slot machines and contemporary lottery tickets. This juxtaposition is not merely postmodern eclecticism; it reveals how the millenarian desires of Philippine popular tradition recycle into the consumerist fantasies of globalized capitalism.
Tapaya’s originality lies in his ability to avoid the pitfalls of culturalism and exoticism. His mythological references never function as decorative ornaments intended to seduce the Western gaze, but as tools for critical analysis of contemporary modernity. The Chocolate Ruins thus transforms the Spanish colonial history into a key to reading current neocolonial mechanisms, showing how the extraction of raw materials continues to structure the relationships between the Philippines and the global economy.
This critical dimension is also manifested in his treatment of the environment. Tapaya belongs to that generation of Southern artists who grew up with a keen awareness of the global ecological catastrophe. His lush forests, invaded by fantastic creatures, simultaneously evoke the precolonial Eden and the contemporary environmental apocalypse. Manama’s Abode (2013) presents a landscape where the human and the mineral merge in a pantheistic vision that evokes pre-Christian animist cosmologies while denouncing current mining destruction.
The artist thus develops an aesthetic of resistance that passes neither through primitivist nostalgia nor futuristic utopia, but through the critical reactivation of the mythical past. His hybrid creatures, neither fully human nor completely animal, embody the unrealized potentialities of the alternative modernity that national liberation movements carried before being crushed by neocolonial logics.
This political vision crystallizes in a particularly striking manner in his architectural representations. The Spanish colonial-style buildings that dot his canvases never function as mere decorative elements, but as markers of the spatial inscription of power. In Whisper Cutler (2014), the classical building that dominates the composition evokes both colonial courts and contemporary democratic institutions, revealing the continuity of oppressive structures beyond political regime changes.
Tapaya is thus established as one of the most penetrating chroniclers of the contemporary postcolonial condition. His art reveals how societies emerging from decolonization continue to inhabit mental spaces structured by the colonial experience, while developing creative strategies for cultural reappropriation. As he himself expresses it: “In a way, I realize that the old stories are not just metaphors. I can find connections with the contemporary era. It’s as if the myths were poetic narrations of the present” [3]. This political dimension never harms the plastic quality of his works; it nourishes it instead by conferring upon it that existential urgency which characterizes great works of art.
The Studio as Anthropological Laboratory
It must be understood that Tapaya’s workshop in Bulacan functions like a true ethnographic research laboratory. The artist has been conducting a systematic investigation there for years on Philippine oral traditions, collecting local variants of myths and legends from the elders of different provinces. This working method, which he himself describes as research-based, radically transforms the status of the contemporary artist: Tapaya is no longer just a producer of images, but a cultural transmitter who reactivates the buried memories of his country. Asked about his creative process, the artist explains how “collage has become not only a preliminary creative process for the technique I use in the ‘Scrap Paintings’ series, but it is also the central theme of my work as a whole” [4].
This ethnographic dimension of his practice meets the most current concerns of global contemporary art, where many artists develop quasi-anthropological approaches to their practice. But Tapaya avoids the pitfall of Western relational art by preserving an irreducible aesthetic autonomy. His field investigations never turn into mere documentation; they feed a process of plastic creation that radically transfigures the collected materials.
The major innovation of this approach lies in its ability to reactivate the traditional social functions of art while preserving the formal requirements of artistic modernity. Tapaya’s canvases function simultaneously as autonomous works of art intended for the international market and as supports for cultural transmission for Philippine communities. This dual function avoids the schizophrenia characteristic of many contemporary artists from the Global South, forced to navigate between the contradictory expectations of local and international markets.
Political Economy of the Image
The growing international recognition of Tapaya, from his prestigious award in 2011 to recent exhibitions in major Asian and European galleries, reveals the transformations of the global contemporary art market. The Filipino artist embodies the emergence of a new generation of Southern artists who impose their specific cultural references without compromising the Orientalist expectations of the Western market. His works now sell in major auction houses for sums that sometimes exceed 300,000 euros, testifying to the growing appetite of collectors for an art that combines formal sophistication and authentic cultural anchoring.
This commercial success should not obscure the fundamental critical dimension of his work. Tapaya belongs to that generation of artists who grew up with a keen awareness of neocolonial mechanisms and who develop particularly sophisticated aesthetic strategies of resistance. His constant references to the systems of patronage inherited from the Spanish colonial period reveal how contemporary Philippine elites perpetuate structures of domination that date back several centuries.
The Chocolate Ruins thus functions as a true Marxist analysis of the Philippine political economy, showing how the extraction of raw materials continues to structure the relationships between the archipelago and the global economy. But this critique is expressed through a plastic language of exceptional formal richness that avoids any propagandistic dimension. The artist perfectly masters the codes of international contemporary art while preserving an irreducible cultural specificity.
The Future of an Aesthetic
Rodel Tapaya represents the culmination of a long historical process: the emergence of a contemporary art from the Global South that imposes its own references without complexes or submission to Western canons. His works reveal how a local artistic tradition can radically renew itself through contact with global modernity without losing its specific identity. This creative synthesis opens up unprecedented aesthetic perspectives that go far beyond the framework of Philippine art.
The growing influence of Tapaya on the international art scene testifies to a profound transformation of global cultural power relations. Artists from the South no longer merely adapt the formal innovations of the North; they develop their own plastic languages that in turn influence the evolution of global contemporary art. This dynamic reveals the emergence of a true global artistic polycentrism that challenges the cultural hierarchies inherited from the colonial period.
Tapaya’s art thus heralds the advent of a truly planetary aesthetic that integrates the diversity of human cultural traditions without hierarchizing them. His canvases reveal how archaic myths can nourish a contemporary creation of radical modernity, opening up unexplored paths for 21st-century art. This creative synthesis between tradition and modernity, local and global, perhaps constitutes one of the most important contributions of contemporary art from the South to global culture.
In an increasingly fragmented and polarized world, the art of Rodel Tapaya reminds us that artistic creation retains a unique capacity to reveal the deep bonds that unite humanity beyond apparent cultural differences. His works testify to this universality of the human experience that finds in the diversity of cultural traditions not an obstacle but its richest expression. Perhaps this is where the true greatness of this artist lies: in his ability to transform Philippine art into a mirror of the contemporary human condition.
- Rodel Tapaya, quoted in “Dichotomy and Integration of Science and Myth”, On Art and Aesthetics, May 19, 2020.
- Rodel Tapaya, interview with A3 Editorial, “A3 Behind the Scenes”, April 26, 2016.
- Rodel Tapaya, quoted in the exhibition “Rodel Tapaya: New Art from the Philippines”, National Gallery of Australia, 2017.
- Tang Contemporary Art, “Random Numbers Exhibition”, April 22, 2021.
