Tedesco’s exhibit honors his Filipino mother and his culture

It is entirely apropos that painter Andrew Tedesco’s dark, haunting and untitled solo exhibition is on display so close to Halloween. But it is not the cliche over-the-top monster extravaganza of killer clowns, aliens, zombies, and grinning homicidal slashers. 

Rather, the paintings by Tedesco — who is also known in the local art community as Bad Andy — are deeply personal ruminations on the nature of death, grief and mourning. During and after the long-term illness and subsequent passing of his Filipino mother, he embraced elements of the folklore and mythology of his maternal heritage as a way to navigate through an emotional limbo.

His paintings are dark, in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Working with a subdued palette and a straight from the paint tube or aerosol spray can, melancholia abounds. Many of the paintings are set within the sterile and clinical spaces of an impersonal hospital with harsh lighting, dizzying hallways and stairways to heaven. Or elsewhere.

Tedesco inserts mythological entities into the foreboding hospital settings and those strange figures of Filipino folklore — the diwata, the Tikbalang, the aswang and others — become symbols of complex emotions. They exist in the netherworld of transition, in the space between the living and the dead.

The diwata, a term for the all-encompassing gender-neutral loose pantheon of little-g gods, goddesses, nymphs, fairies and spirits of nature, make their presence known. They may appear standing beside a hospital bed, their ethereal being striking a counterbalance to the clinical reality of the medical facility. 

Tikbalang, hybrid creatures of half-human and half-animal, may loom in a corner, representing confusion or helplessness. 

The aswang are a plentiful bunch of witches, weredogs, vampires known as the Mandurugo, and the disturbing Manananggal, strange beings said to survive on a diet of internal organs or to feed on the phlegmatic discharge of the sick. Of course, they would seek sustenance in a hospital. 

For Tedesco, the figures of folklore became a way of making sense of emotionally sterile spaces, imbuing them with symbols of transition, dread and ultimately, acceptance. 

“Oculus” (acrylic and aerosol) is devoid of any such beings. It depicts a dreary Frankensteinian chamber, all gray with a few inexplicable touches of sprayed fluorescent pink. Great lamps stand on either side of a table on which a life might be saved or lost, or an autopsy performed, or a prisoner tortured. The mind too easily shifts to the darkness.

“Take my Hands into Yours” (acrylic, graphite, charcoal and aerosol) is an image of a woman in a black gown, slit up to her hip. The dress is emblazoned with tiny white dots. One of her arms is bare and quite human. The other is turquoise and purple. Her hand is a talon.

Two staircases rise into eternity behind her. Her head is the skull of a tiger. She is Tala, the Goddess of the Stars. Ah, those weren’t tiny dots on her gown. They were constellations. And she is ready to guide the transitioning to a higher plane.

Anagolay, the Goddess of Lost Things, is featured in “All of this is Fleeting” (acrylic, charcoal and aerosol). She wears a patterned cloak of red, violet and blue. One of her three hands holds a yellow-centered white flower, perhaps symbolizing new beginnings. A golden halo hovers over her head, which is the skull of a beaver.

The aptly titled “So Below” (acrylic, aerosol and charcoal) is a depiction of Sitan, the God of the Underworld, in charge of hidden things, secrets and transformation. Against a vivid pink background, the mole-skulled deity wears a deep green smoking jacket and stares back at the viewer, all the while appearing to play some simple wind instrument. It may be an allusion to the satyr Pan of Greek mythology. After all, it seems as though all world mythologies feed into each other.

“Absent” (acrylic, graphite and charcoal) features a figure seated behind a desk, lighting a pipe with a bright teal flame. Beyond him, there is a shelf of books in a cabinet. He may be an administrator of some kind, although the pipe conjures up the stereotype of an old-school Freudian psychiatrist. Something in his posture, in his very demeanor, comes across as arrogant or condescending, as least as much a pig-skulled hybrid could be.

Perhaps the most eerie work in the exhibition is “Vacant” (oil and tar) with a bird-headed androgynous figure confined to a wheelchair. It may suggest that their transition to the afterlife is already underway.

With all of these intriguing juxtapositions of folklore and what most consider the real world, Tedesco successfully conveys a sense of the surreal nature of grieving within hospital walls, where as he states, “time becomes fluid and emotions intensify.”

He continues to say that “the fluorescent lights, cold metal and white sheets all blend into a singular, haunting memory.” Each mythological figure represents some part of the process of grieving: denial, anger and acceptance.

By incorporating the elements of Filipino folk tales into his paintings, Tedesco honors his mother and his culture and offers possibilities beyond the usual. 

His exhibition will be on display at the Co-Creative Center, 137 Union St., New Bedford, through the end of October.

Don Wilkinson has been writing art reviews, artist profiles and cultural commentary on the South Coast for over a decade. He has been published in local newspapers and regional art magazines. He is a graduate of the Swain School of Design and the CVPA at UMass Dartmouth. Email him at dwilkinson@newbedfordlight.org

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