Backbone: A Farmer’s Narrative

Jared Yokte | Blanc Gallery | November 10-December 1, 2021

Backbone: A Farmer’s Narrative is Jared Yokte’s latest visual documentation that ponders on one of the Philippines’ most heavily strained backbones: farmers. Ignited by conversations and time spent with farming communities while riding his bike in and around his quiet, landlocked corner in Tarlac, Yokte creates nightmarish scenes of the understated struggles farmers face amidst natural calamities and social and political turbulence. Adding a pandemic to the mix, farmers remain to be among the hardest hit yet most underserved essential workers.

With the artist having always been largely inspired by his surroundings, Yokte lifts recurring imagery from his personal visual diary and combines it with jarring truths learned along the way. Painting his trademark hirsute characters in crude strokes and disquieting expressions, Yokte relays the farmers’ narratives the way they’re seared into his mind: haunting, seething, and fuming with unanswered questions. The collection of works feels—almost literally—like a burning village, with its villagers captured in different states of desperation-driven madness and terror. In a way, it points to the looming larger picture of a world both burning and drowning due to human-accelerated change tipping towards drastic proportions.

Visually, ‘Backbone’ may contain Yokte’s most monochromatic works yet, with sparing but significant breaks of color that are familiar from his usual palette. He utilizes key elements that trigger a mostly universal sense of discomfort: crudeness, violence, and gore that strip away sugar-coated pleasantries; but it’s a kind of discomfort that comes as a necessity together with certain urgent truths, such as the irony of having farmers regularly experience hunger and harassment. His recurring use of entrails seems to point to this unsettling reminder this time: food remains to be a basic, universal need, and how our mortality heavily relies on the people who grow it.

Despite the dominant oppressed feeling found throughout the works, there’s also a palpable feeling of rage and resistance rising from rural ranks.  Yokte makes noticeable use of farming tools as storytelling devices—such as in the sculptures he named “Rakeman” and “Sprayman”—that quite aptly represent the struggles of the working class. While it’s clear that farmers are victims, Backbone also hints at the potency of rage and collective sentiment—almost like a precautionary tale.

While straightforward and almost confrontational, Yokte believes in providing ample space between artwork and viewer. Like most working-class artists, he also feels the overwhelming complexity of social injustices and the pipe dream that is good governance. But he also believes that documenting and retelling marginalized narratives by way of art and speech is essential, and potent in provoking thoughts that help us break free from harmful and selfish perceptions and habits.

How far can a backbone bend before it breaks? Should anyone even be considering sticking around to find out? Like the artist,‘Backbone’ doesn’t offer sweeping generalizations or solutions. All it offers is a glimpse into the burning truth, and hopefully be moved to see and engage from a more grounded and sympathetic vantage point.

Exhibit notes by Nikki Ignacio