<em>Sari-Sari</em> Style: Tropical Excess and an Asian Sense of Brown in Wawi Navarroza's Photographs

Abstract

2 2 Portfolio Emmanuel David Sari-­Sari Style: Tropical Excess and an Asian Sense of Brown in Wawi Navarroza’s Photographs The scene is excessive. In “I Want To Live A Thousand More Years” (Self-­ Portrait After Dengue, with tropical plants and fake flowers) (2016) (Figure 1), Filipina artist Wawi Navarroza depicts herself wearing mismatched floral patterns. She is sitting alone on a tall red stool, gazing intently at the camera and wearing gem stone–­embellished tsinelas (sandals). In an asymmetrical pose, her right arm rests on a wooden crutch. It appears that Navarroza is in the thick of an artificial tropical forest, but she could also be at a vendor’s stall in a place like Manila’s Dangwa Flower Market, where one can buy fresh-­cut flowers and arrangements for any occasion. Almost every inch is filled with colorful blooms and lush green plants, as well as strewn potting soil and floral-­ print fabric backdrops. This is a portrait of the artist as a survivor in a tropical setting: recovering from dengue, she projects herself into a future. The photograph’s brown frame is a key element of her surroundings: the materials list states that it has been custom tinted to the color of the artist’s skin. This detail prompts a comparison of tones. Viewers may notice differences between the color of Navarroza’s photographed face, with fairer skin tones produced by studio light design, and the color of the painted frame with more golden brown hues.1 Navarroza does not name or specify the exact skin color, instead leaving questions of equivalence open ended: are these skin tones moreno, kayumanggi (brown), or another shade of brown altogether? No matter what the actual color is, and whether there is an actual match or even an attempted match of skin color and frame, the materials list directs the viewer’s attention to the Figure 1. Wawi Navarroza, “I Want To Live A Thousand More Years” (Self-­Portrait After Dengue, with tropical plants and fake flowers), 2016. Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle, cold-­ mounted on acid-­ free aluminum, with artist’s exhibition frame, i.e. double wood frame custom-­ tinted to WN skin tone. 50h × 40w in, 127h × 101.60w cm. Edition of 5 with 2 Artist’s Proofs. Photo courtesy of SILVERLENS. 4 Portfolio 4 Portfolio artist’s skin as part of the work’s composition. Brownness becomes part of the subject matter. In the emphasis on the tonal variations of this nonwhite framing device, I find a certain belonging to what José Esteban Muñoz calls the “brown commons.” For Muñoz, brownness is about a sharedness and commonality of the “ability to flourish under duress and pressure” (2020, 2). This concept resonates with Navarroza’s postdengue portrait and her corpus in general, as well as with broader discussions about global Asias; writing about Wu Tsang’s film Wildness, Muñoz makes clear that his concept of browness can potentially include Asianness (138). His expansive “sense of brown” extends to those who exist at the intersections of local and global forces, those who are “also brown insofar as they smolder with a life and persistence: they are brown because brown is a common color shared by a commons that is of and for the multitude” (2). For Navarroza , in her subject matter and in her technical and formal choices, there appears to be an Asian sense of the brown commons, an unquestionable and persistant vitality even under duress. Her radiant hope for something else and something more is crystalized in her stated desire in the title to extend life into a distant future—­ and extend the work into the brown frame and thus into the world surrounding it. I begin this short essay with Navarroza’s “I Want to Live a Thousand More Years” because it exposes a series of tensions in her artistic practice, especially relations between real and artificial, whiteness and brownness, interiority and exteriority, depth and surface, digital and analog. While her artistic practice resonates with a long history of women photographers across the world, many of whom have challenged the white, male, and colonial gaze, there is a distinctly Filipina character to...