The Negros Museum, Bacolod City presents Diaries of My Time, a solo exhibit by Roedil “Joe” Geraldo who has been telling stories through his artmaking for over 30 years. It runs until September 21, 2026.
He acts as “a visual memoirist and a social conscience,” using his pen-and-ink drawings, paintings, and terracotta sculptures to record his observations of a Philippine society in its disturbed and uneasy state.
What’s wrong with the Philippines? Let me make a list. Or better still, why don’t you make your own list? Poverty and unemployment, systemic graft and corruption, inequality and the wealth gap, political instability, environmental degradation and climate change, etcetera, says Google AI. That’s old news, really.
Chronicle of a life
Geraldo’s own deep-seated emotions of what’s wrong with the country are captured in his works, pulsating with visceral images of grim and raw chaos in a society that cannot seem to get anything right and fair for ordinary Filipinos.
Black-and-white: Geraldo’s pen-and-ink drawings are mostly dense and heavily textured and shaded, full of lines, dots, zigzags, circles, and coronas, where he takes us into a deep time journey in subterranean space where one is free to roam, blurring the edges of reality.
Amidst abstract geometric shapes and archetypal figures, recurring motifs include human faces, figures with multiple breasts or eyes, floating hands and limbs, tentacles, angel wings, flowers, the third eye, half-man and half animals, birds, trees, and plant forms all interconnected, without any end or beginning. Like primal motifs, the drawings remind us of tribal art around the world.
Geraldo’s drawings include White Ground 2, The world of Lies Fantasy, Magnanakaw ng Galing, Red Tide, Where I Go, and Save Me.
Clay power: For Geraldo, clay is a very Filipino medium, used by our ancestors in making functional and ritual clay objects in their everyday lives.
Elongated, disfigured bodies, wave-like hair, faces full of emotion mark Geraldo’s terracotta sculptures, expressing his inimitable style and workmanship. Wave of life greets viewers at the exhibit entrance.
A terracotta installation, Give a dog a bone features 12 brown dogs seated on a floor strewn and covered with money, in front of a terracotta king. A drawing hangs in a wall above the king titled Hunger, showing a group of people huddled together with a single rose bud sprouting.
With their elongated and contorted forms, the dogs symbolize a society driven by vested interests and abuse of power. Money talks, money can get you anything, or almost everything? Echoes of “…absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Meanwhile, ordinary Filipinos go hungry every day.
Geraldo’s acrylic and watercolor works include Year of Crocodile that shows green crocodiles with glistening red eyes that lie waiting for anyone who dares to trespass their watery lair. A terrified man in the water, bites a red rose of salvation.
As everyone knows, crocodiles symbolize corrupt politicians and government officials. Who put them in power? We did.
In another work, Peace, with a fiery red background, a woman in a contemplative mood is surrounded by black leafless trees and gray-white birds. Is real peace ever attainable in our society?
In the Story of My Time Series, grim tales of destruction and despair, tears and pain, are depicted in six works of watercolor on paper, in green, fuchsia, and blue.
The six paintings depict the following images: a man kneeling with arms raised upwards, is it an act of surrender? Five human figures showing only their legs in an exploding color of fuchsia; A blue canvas in water with leafless trees sprouting red buds of life, a symbol of hope; Women’s faces submerged in water amidst destruction in yellow, gray, and black; a bleeding black bird with an arrow pierced through its body, amidst a burning landscape.
Other works include Tears and Lumos, acrylic on canvas where a gelatinous substance in luminous green envelops a female body. Is it an act of drowning/lumos? Scattered around are light blue flowers. Is our society in the process of dissolving, disintegrating slowly?
Roedil Geraldo (b.1969, Talisay, Negros Occidental): a quite prolific artist, he is known for his terracotta sculptures. His output also includes drawings, paintings, wood carvings, and murals. He studied fine arts at La Consolacion College-Bacolod and opened his studio, Geraldo Art Space, as an art hub for his community and emerging artists in 2024.
He won first prize in sculpture at the 6th GSIS Art Competition; a finalist in the 2008 Philippine Art Awards; in 2005, he won third prize in sculpture in the Open Biennial Terracotta Art Festival in Dumaguete City.
His artistic projects include Tropical Halo-Halo, an artist residency and exhibition in Leipzig, Germany, 2023; Set Zero, Khon Kaen International Contemporary Art Project at Khon Kaen University,Thailand; Candon Mural Art Festival in Candon, Ilocos Sur; and Immersive Art: Of Echoes & Currents, a performance-based art presentation in a Makati hotel, all in 2024.