To think of Cebu as aquapelagic is to look at it beyond its islandness, beyond the terrestrial geography that defines it as a place, a province and a community. Rather, the important notion of the aquapelago offers an alternative metageographical framework that emphasizes the often negligible aquatic spaces between and around mainland Cebu, its smaller island communities and its neighboring island provinces, and how these waters are utilized and navigated in a manner that is fundamentally interconnected with and essential to the social and cultural life of Cebuanos.
Duyan ang Kadagatan, cradled by the seas, explores the important place of Cebu’s surrounding waters in shaping Cebuano culture and identity. The national artist Resil Mojares traces the origin of the name Cebu to the word “sugbo” which means to wade through shallow waters as one alights from a boat upon arriving at the shoreline. To sugbo through the waters is to be at the crossroad of exchange, to be at the gateways of a new beginning. The very idea of sugbo aligns with the idea of Caribbean historian Kamau Brathwaite’s theory of “tidalectics,” an analytical method based on what he describes as “the movement of the water backwards and forwards as a kind of cyclic motion, rather than linear.” The seas mediate places, the waters enchant time, dance with the winds, and deliver people and cultures from shore to shore.
The etymology of Sugbo comes as no surprise as the history of the Cebuanos is hugely linked with the movements of the tides, of the knowledge of the sea, of stories of long voyages of ancient sea-faring Visayan warriors. As early colonial chroniclers had recorded, Cebu was a bustling international port that serves as the center of social, economic and cultural life of precolonial Visayan society.
The exhibition, therefore, allows for a postcolonial reimagination of Bisayan culture by re/turning to its origins in islandic life that held a land-oceanic continuum, that situates Cebuano social life in an integrated terrestrial-marine space. Furthermore, it hopes to examine the inevitable influence of long colonial subjugation that defined the Philippine archipelago as territories and satellites of colonial presence in this part of the world. The exhibition studies the island communities of Zaragoza islet in Badian, Olango, Camotes, Hilotongan and Bantayan islands, exploring various aspects of islandic cultures including boat-building traditions, fishing methods, and implements, intangible knowledge like sea routes, fishing seasons and ethnoastronomy, faith, and belief systems. It explores Cebuano's creativity and ingenuity expressed in the communities’ foodways, boat designs, and shellcraft. Above all, it highlights the heroism of local fisherfolks in ensuring marine food security and protecting the seas amidst growing ecological concerns.
The idea of aquapelago is to allow the waters to speak, enchant us again with its stories, reveal its secrets and troubles, and ultimately endow us with a kind of eco-consciousness, to think with water as a step towards rediscovering and harnessing the cultural knowledge of island communities to mitigate pressing environmental concerns.
Jay Nathan
Jore Curator