| There are things that catch your attention when it comes to art and then there is that one that really stands out. You need to dig up and find its original story and in the case of a mural painting that covers the current renovation of the Ayala Museum featuring a jeepney painting that had an overloaded passenger it really caught my attention how it was depicted being set in a local province in the Philippines.
But it gets interesting when I was getting my friend’s stuff in order to bring it to his temporary place before he goes back to his home country. Interesting enough that all his stuff was sitting in my room almost nine years ago and while I was preparing I came across an old postcard from 2001 that made it more than just a jeepney image. |
I’ve seen enough art both poignantly impressive to downright controversial, but nothing like an iconic jeepney painting that covers the barriers of the front façade of the Ayala Museum that really got my attention. It is a painting of an overloaded jeepney where all the passengers packed up to the roof before leaving the terminal for the long road trip ahead.
This mural has been covering the museum since they started renovation and improvements and to make the barriers covering the place interesting they cover it up with vinyl tarpaulin that features paintings and artworks and one of them is this image of a jeepney. At first, I find it interesting that I had taken photos of it several times whenever I had the opportunity to see it. But what made me got more interested is the discovery of a very old postcard that was published in 2001 and it is a spitting image of that mural painting that I saw outside the museum.
The photograph image of the postcard was taken by Urs Fankhauser, an overloaded jeepney in Tacloban City. Fankhauser has been taking photos since the 1990s, but there’s no exact year as most of his photos where used as postcards sold at National Bookstore. The earliest image of one of his postcards was dated back to 1994 of a vendor selling ‘Lechón’ (roasted pig). But going back to the postcard in question got me curious of its origins.
I tried to look for Urs Fankhauser but the only thing turned up is a Linkedin account, but still unsure if he’s the one who took the image. The other is the mural paintings of the jeepney that currently adores the barrier covering the Ayala Museum. There was information that the mural was painted by Marvic Millton M. Reyes titled "Tuloy and Byahe" that was his entry in 2005 which he won for the Shell National Student Art Competition.
The mural is slightly different from the actual photograph that was taken by Urs Fankhauser reinterpreting the image changing the “Tacloban Sta-Rita” signage on the side of the jeepney and replacing it with “Pilipinas” and the registered plate number sign from “HVB-173” to “JIN-117,” but the rest of the colors and details were retained including the entirety of the backdrop. I try to search details about the painting and photograph in question online, but nothing is turning up about it.
Even the artist’s name doesn’t appear in the search engines as both of these images shows that the painting copied an existing photograph into the artist’s work for his contest entry, which is a derivative of the source material. It is not exactly a reference as the painting is almost an exact copy of the image with minor changes. For now, the painting will be a little bit of mystery, but the proof of the mural is based on the actual photograph of a postcard published in 2001 will now give reason that the painting is not an original but a derivative copy of an actual image.
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