Golden Years Exhibit HOUSTON Closing Night
Saturday, September 30, 2023 (5 – 8pm, program 6pm)
In many ways, martial law has not ended for us – not in how it has impacted Filipino lives across the globe. The blatant display of ruling class family corruption is shown with the former dictator’s son Marcos Jr. “winning” the presidential election through a costly race and decades-running propaganda machine, while billions of stolen wealth remains unpaid. The institutionalization of the military continues to mean activists and innocents are tortured, disappeared, and murdered without due cause. The opening of the Philippine economy to foreign capital keeps the poverty rate and cost of living in the Philippines high while officials and cronies get richer and threatens the safety of women, indigenous peoples, and the environment where foreign bases are built. Labor export policy in this unsustainable economy continues to force working people to migrate or leave the country entirely, separating their families to live abroad in unsafe conditions.
To close Houston’s commemoration of the 51st anniversary of martial law in the Philippines through the “Golden Years: Weighing Philippine Martial Law” photo exhibit, we invite our community to return to the space to connect over the experiences of the era we found ourselves ready to talk about after the opening night, to unpack what our memories, feelings, stories, and questions can tell us about our people’s history and future.
Golden Years: Weighing Philippine Martial Law 1972-1981 is an exhibition of photographs on the Philippines that appeared in U.S. newspapers in the 1960s-1980s. It is organized to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Philippine martial law, which was declared by the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos on September 21, 1972. The show’s title is an ironic take on how the Marcos family labeled their rule as the “golden age of Philippine economy and society.” By juxtaposing this claim with visual documentation of their ear, the show examines the malleability of perception, the elasticity of reality, and the vulnerabilities of individual and national memory.
The exhibit likewise underscores the role of the foreign press in documenting and examining history as it unfolds. First published in the U.S. papers, the photographs on display are source documents, detached from the influence and intervention of their subjects. Victor Barnuevo Velasco, curator, notes that “the photos are snapshots of history as they happen. The distance of the publication from the site of the events provided objectivity that normally comes only with the passage of time.”
The photographs form part of a private collection promised to the Albay Arts Foundation.
The Houston stop is sponsored by Malaya Movement Texas, the Filipino American National Historical Society – Houston, Texas Chapter, Anakbayan Houston, Filipinx Artists of Houston, Arts & Culture Lab (@5301.18a), Active Vista, DAKILA, and Albay Arts Foundation.
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