Cian Dayrit’s Antiauthoritarianism

Schemes of Belligerence at Nome, Berlin presents a seething counter-history of colonisation, revolution and militaristic control of the Philippines

Cian Dayrit’s latest Berlin exhibition outwardly appears to speak the language of state-sanctioned narratives: squint at the opening room of the Philippine artist’s third show at Nome, presented against brownish-orange walls, and you could be in a national museum. The room-filling installation Imperial Puppet Regalia (2022) features carved and polished wooden figures perched on the crossbars of suspended embroidered heraldic crests, military shirts and peasant hats on wooden supports, and a rack of carved wooden canes. Very quickly, though, it’s apparent that this is an antiauthoritarian display, a seething counter-history. The jointed, bobble-headed figures are soldiers toting pistols and rifles and, pointedly, puppets. The crests, mixing methods of traditional embroidered craftwork with the sewn-on badges that adorn military outfits, are blazoned with the stitched phrases ‘Deception’ and ‘Dominion’ and feature patterns of gunsights, all-seeing eyes and plants with bloody roots. At the foot of the costumes, meanwhile, are encircling sandbags. And the canes are topped with tightly whittled forms including a crown-wearing lion, an eagle, a clenched fist and a spiky COVID-19 virion.

These, evidently, are intended to microcosm the successive turbulent waves of colonisation, revolution and militaristic control inflicted upon the resource-rich Philippines over the past five centuries, variously under Spain, the United States, Japan, an internal military dictatorship whose legacy is reflected in Ferdinand Marcos’s son being the current president, and what Dayrit classes as today’s ‘neocolony’ status, in which covert US control underwrites a martial culture particularly evident in enforced COVID lockdowns and crack- downs on activism and free speech. Amid this, Dayrit’s approach to verifiable truth is pointedly blurry and tricksterish, using deception against deception. It’s not always clear, for example, where the military badges he uses – both affixed to outfits and as part of the multipart, mixed-media, wall-based presentations in the second room – are real or satirical. A metal ‘Expert Rifleman’ award is likely legit; an embroidered ‘Evidence Planter’ surely not; a third, reading ‘Let God Sort ‘Em Out! Kill ‘Em All’, could go either way. This last is part of a sardonic faux banner for a Philippine army recruitment office, which spells out Dayrit’s position in case you somehow missed it amid his misdirects: ‘Do you want to be a mercenary for your beloved neocolony? Do you want to be a puppet of imperialist states?… Don’t read history, make it!’

Though this is a detail-rich presentation, the broad strokes come across quickly, underlining a feeling of impatience with artworld niceties or self-congratulatory conceptual cleverness. What mutates is Dayrit’s tone, which switches from directed anger to scything sarcasm. A repeated refrain in the stitched texts is a statement-concluding ‘hahaha’ that capsules gleefully uncaring authority. The artist, though, is careful to note – or at least the press release is – that this isn’t just the story of one country but a model of ‘the proliferation of fascist regimes and the cultures and norms such regimes inflict upon people’. Germany, of course, knows something of historical fascist regimes; but to judge from election results in the past few years, the country – led from the embittered eastern regions – is increasingly turning starkly rightward once again, lessons increasingly forgotten. Schemes of Belligerence, in this sense and in this location, constitutes both a warning from history and a warning from the present day.

Schemes of Belligerence at Nome, Berlin, 14 September – 4 November