A Taste of Goy[a] at the Chocolate Kiss

Ang Kiukok:Mother and Child

A Taste of Goy[a] at the Chocolate Kiss
A review of Ana Mari Goy’s works exhibited at the Chocolate Kiss Café

Last week, my family and I went to eat dinner at the Chocolate Kiss at the second floor of the Ang Bahay ng Alumni, within the University of the Philippines, Diliman Campus. As I entered the door of this cozy but bustling campus café, I immediately spotted the paintings on the walls along the entrance hall.

Wading through a pool of diners to get permission from the manager to examine the works up close, I noted that the paintings on the left side are noticeably contradictory in style from those works at the right. I assumed naively that these must be the works of two different artists. Of course, the manager set me straight. It turns out that all the five paintings in the reception are all done by one woman—Ana Mari Goy. These, according to her, are the first to arrive among the works of Goy to be exhibited in the café.

On the right wall, three conservative works done in oil on canvas, greet the diners in the impressionist style. Garden Gateway and The Courtyard both 12”x16” paintings remind me of the lush, hidden gardens in Western countries that are featured in HGTV’s “Secret Gardens”. The Garden Gateway done in brush strokes reminiscent of the Impressionists, features an arch of vines in rich greens and yellows. Likewise,The Courtyard, with its verdant surroundings, lets us take a peek on what seems to be a bird feeder or an old water fountain, filled with blossoms. The third canvas on this side, Waiting for the Tide is a slightly bigger 24”x16” painting in oil. In shades of blue and pink merging into violets, it presents a native boat docked peacefully on the beach.

Turning my attention to the left side of the hallway, two unsigned larger paintings—whose titles are yet unknown to the café manager— welcome the guests with a modernism which reminds me of Ang Kiuok’s Mother and Child painting. Both paintings, apparently done in 1993, feature a woman squatting. Set in a background of reds, the first painting presents a dark, heavy and clothed woman, whose hair is set in “puyod,” squatting beside a blue-green “burnay” or native jar. The other one, presented in a rather similar background, shows the seemingly same woman naked with her heavy breasts hanging, poised like a sumo-wrestler. Though, the hands and feet of the figures are not exactly well-defined, like most modern paintings that I have seen so far, the figures definitely send powerful feelings to the viewer(like myself). Seeing a woman (which to me seems as native Filipina as “mangga and bagoong”) clothed in one painting, then undressed in another forces me to think more deeply about the changing roles of women, yesterday, today and maybe , tomorrow.

In this exhibit, Goy’s works gives the viewers a taste of impressionism alongside modernism. Through these paintings, she calms you one minute, and confronts you the next. Gino Dormiento in his article Women divine, Wilwayco Sublime which talks about the eight women artists whose works were featured in “Walong Pilipina:Parangal kay Tandang Sora”, says the following about Goy: “Goy, the better half of the equally famous super-realist Agustin, yields an impressionistic touch in her small-size landscapes that celebrates the gently quiet charm of remaining bucolic surroundings”. He also mentions that Goy is among the artists featured in this show who “paint along contrasting conservative and modernist modes”.

Like the menu in the Chocolate Kiss Café which teases one’s palates with the scrumptious steaks alongside its sweet, delectable carrot cakes, Goy—in her exhibit in this café—treats the diners to a contrast of the peaceful greenery and seascape and the provocative images of the squatting woman. Unfortunately, this hungry diner had to leave hungry. Due to the volume of people all wanting to have their share of meal at this campus café, and patiently waiting it out in a long line outside, we couldn’t get a decent table. We have thus decided that after all the palate/palette teasing that my family had experienced that night, we needed solid food, fast.