2011 / Installation and performance / Artist: Alwin Reamillo / Tin-Aw Art Gallery, Makati City, Philippines

Ang Balutviand—literally, duck egg as viand—is also a play on the word “balikbayan,” a term applied to overseas Filipinos who return to their homeland. It was developed primarily out of a performance that Reamillo mounted earlier in the same year when he was artist-in-residence for Hong Kong ArtWalk, an annual one-night charity event involving Hong Kong galleries. For that earlier eight-hour piece, Reamillo roamed the streets of the Chinese territory, particularly the known haunts of Filipino migrant workers, in the manner of an ambulant balut vendor, though he distributed his wares for free. While his basket did contain a few edible samples of the fertilized duck egg that had been purchased from Wan Chai market, most of the “egg objects” were balut that had been emptied, refilled, and strengthened with plaster and emulsion, and embellished with historical and contemporary scenes of Hong Kong and Manila.

Ang Balutviand draws energy from Reamillo’s previous creative efforts. In fact, many of the works that he executed over the course of his career grew out of and converse with another, as might be seen in the prominent place of food in his art. Reamillo first performed as a seller of balut in Manila in 1999 for the initial edition of Ugnayan: Philippine International Performance Art Festival, and in a 2004 exhibition in Tambayang Makiling Artspace, also in Manila. This latter work was titled Ang Viand (MacKilling Me MicroSoftly with E-saw), in which he used roasted pig heads, emu eggs, and assorted condiments rather than balut.

Upon completing his residency, and informed by his experiences in Hong Kong, Reamillo returned to Manila to mount Ang Balutviand, which on opening night saw Reamillo replicating his ArtWalk performance, this time on Makati Ave. As for the exhibition itself, scattered throughout the space of Tin-aw—hanging from the ceiling, lined up along walls, placed on dishes, or nestled in baskets—were several duck eggs, each bearing a figure, scene, or image, or fitted out with other objects. Interspersed with the balut were other elements that have become recurring motifs in Reamillo’s vocabulary, such as painted crab shells and repurposed piano parts.

Reamillo is an advocate of what he calls “creative bayanihan,” which is informed by the local tradition of communal support for relocating families, and the concept of “social sculpture” as propounded by Joseph Beuys. In light of these notions, Reamillo embraces the spirit of play and the use of humor in his art-making, even as he seeks to grapple with and comment on social issues. In Ang Balutviand, for instance, Reamillo poses pointed questions about and around migrant labor, especially the traffic of bodies between the Philippines and Hong Kong, which is one of the most popular destinations for overseas Filipino workers, whose contributions to both the Philippine and Hong Kong economy come at enormous social costs.