'Paint' the dead

Junyee's first brush with art began inside a morgue, long before he became the Father of Philippine Installation Art

- By LAYETA P. BUCOY and JOHANNES L. CHUA

There are artists who were born into the light-welcomed, encouraged, molded from comfort. Junyee was not one of them.

His life as an artist began in the dark, in the one place no aspiring 17-yearold would willingly choose to stand-a morgue. Not a gallery, not an atelier, but a cold, cramped room where he was asked not to paint a canvas, but to "paint" on the face of a corpse.

Before he became the country's foremost installation artist, Junyee's survival depended on a job most young artists today would never imagine accepting: He was a "makeup artist" for the dead. He remembers that first assignment clearly: an old woman on a steel table, her long black hair like something from folklore. He stood frozen at the doorway, terrified. But one thought was louder than fear: If he turned back, he would never become an artist.

What followed was not glamor, but grit. No bed, no certainty of meals, no validation, just endless nights in a funeral parlor, painting faces of strangers whose names he would never know. It was brutal, humbling, and sacred all at once. And it was here-in a place meant for endings-that Junyee's beginning as an artist truly happened.

Manila Bulletin Lifestyle takes a closer look at the early inspiration, unlikely beginnings, and defining convictions of Junyee.

Growing up, you did not receive full support to pursue the arts (so, you decided to learn somewhere else). What was that moment or season in your life when you first realized that making art was non-negotiable-that you would do it no matter what?

I was in Grade 3, nine years old. I joined an art competition at our school. I just felt like I wanted to draw (a shark and a rose separated by the surface of an ocean). I enjoyed doing it. Eventually, it won first prize. At that time, the word "artist" had not entered my vocabulary. But I was certain it was the one thing I truly wanted to do.