(Driver Erding and His Now-You-See-It-Now-You-Don’t Palace) / 1980 / Mixed media / 146 x 146 x 32 cm / Artist: Jose Tence Ruiz aka Bogie / Ateneo Art Gallery Collection

One of several assemblages by Tence Ruiz in the early 1980s, this lively three-dimensional work captures the folk vitality and rambunctious flair of the jeepney. The artist tries to enter into the jeepney driver’s psychology. Here he brings together all the elements of a survivalist psyche—the talismans and symbols he can clutch at in moments of crisis; doors that swing between the sacred and the profane; an image of the Japanese Mekanda robot of television fame; visual allusions to the Filipino worker’s Saudi Arabian misadventure (a knife neatly laid on a tray as, in the artist’s words, “his daily serving of danger and violence,” also recalling the expression “kumakapit sa patalim” [clutching at a knife’s blade]); and his calendar in which every day is the first of the month, when each day is a new beginning after yesterday’s death, and “where past and future are not as important as the present.”

Erding himself is a large torso whose belly is filled with assorted debris that he accumulates from the makeshift food stalls that offer measly creature comforts along the route. In another version, Erding is built from an upright pay telephone, taken up when used then summarily dropped when no longer needed. His figure is bolstered with stereo tapes and a radio dial to turn on and off at will. His chest is tattooed with the Nazarene in allusion to the popular Quiapo cult with its miraculous potencies of the last resort.