Courtesy of Christian Ray Villanueva. Art by Bea Lu.
Using music, printmaking, painting, drawing, illustration, performance, writing, photography and film, Christian Ray Villanueva’s artworks feature his personal tragic experiences with cancer, trauma, and family. Much of it is defined by the loss of his father, Ruben Jr., whom he writes about in a personal essay on Vogue Philippines.
Written by Christian Ray Villanueva
I have a father of many names, he was simultaneously : Eru, Nonoy, Ruben, Junior. The same could be said of his personality. He was simultaneously creative, passionate, gentle, sensitive and highly emotional. I could say so much about my beloved Papa, much like a scar that stays for a lifetime. It starts from a wound, bleeding then closing to heal, leaving you with a defining mark on your very being. My father did not live for more than 31 years. He unleashed the very first watershed in my life, leaving me when I was 6 years old. As an artist, sometimes I feel fortunate because of the amount of material I can use for my work. But I would call myself unlucky sometimes because of the lack of a father.
My father met my mother when they were only 16. My mother was from Bulacan, and my father was a Negrense. One day in the late 80s, my mother’s neighbor asked if she would like to come to Negros Island for a vacation to meet her family. My mom said yes to the offer, and shortly when she arrived, (which was my grandmother’s younger sister) she met my very shy, bashful father. My mother caught his eye and they started dating during one summer in Negros.
When it was time for my mother to go back home after a few weeks, my father hid my mother inside the closet while my family searched all over the village for my mother. But eventually, my father eventually surfaced her, so it was time for her to go back home. Many years passed, and my parents could not get over each other. My mother, who was dating another man at the time, would write in her diary love notes regarding my father. And my father would keep calling my mother incessantly despite his busy dating life. They were both incredibly passionate young lovers. So passionate, that my father quit college and saved up all his tuition money to buy a plane ticket to see my mother, who was already working at the time. My father soon reunited with my mother as they continued what was to be done during their summer romance and lived together in Manila in an apartment.
Shortly after, I was conceived. While my mother was pregnant with me, my father got so homesick after spending a year in Manila. He needed his family and his friends from the province, he was still 24 years old, and he was only a kid. My mother had strength that was so stoic, that nothing could move her. My father, on the other hand was soft and vulnerable. He needed a sense of community. He wanted to spend his life in Negros because he couldn’t adjust to the city. He wasn’t malleable like my mother, who could adjust to any situation and never complain. My mother never really had the same, nuclear family upbringing that my father had – but she understood my father’s need and they went back to the province, where I was born shortly.
I was born on August 20, 1998, much to my father’s joy and happiness. I would say it was the height of my father’s life. In the 6 years that I was with him, he exposed me to his artistic friends, who would draw and paint a lot – my father worshiped artists. He wanted to be an artist himself. But his creativity was not in the arts. Instead, it was placed in gardening, housekeeping, and carpentering. In fact, his dream for me was to be like him, a builder of sorts. But he was such a late bloomer, I remember attending his graduation from college in San Agustin, where he graduated with a Bachelor’s in Commerce, which never really got put to use. He was still figuring out things for himself as an individual, but that luxury slowly dwindled because of the family that he created.
My father never really had any big ambitions, he only wanted to stay in the province, be with friends, and live a very simple life. This frustrated my mother who wanted my father to find a job. My mother, who worked in a motorcycle company at the time, was not earning enough for us to have a decent living. She also really wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. My father lacked in the department of traditional fatherhood because all he wanted at that time was all the things that young life offered him. My father would take me to kindergarten sometimes and my mother told me a story about how she got very upset by my innocent question, “Why is it that Papa is like the mother, who would wait for me in school like all of my other classmates moms and why are you like the father who works all day?”
Despite all these difficulties, I was a child who was just happy to have both my parents, who were so loving towards me, and especially my father, who I feel I was closer to during those years, as he was the one who would spend the most time with me. Papa would let his friends sketch me, and have his friends keep their paintings inside our house. He would also buy their paintings for cheap. He saw the world in color, sound, and culture. I always thought that it was so corny that I became an artist.
In 2003, during a rainy evening, my father had a horrible motorcycle accident, which damaged his brain. I would say this was the most life-changing moment in my life next to my cancer diagnosis 8 years later. I was so traumatized by my father’s death that I think it broke my meter for emotions as a child. He created a black hole inside of me that can never be satisfied. My father transformed into a grotesque human being. He was fed through a tube, he could not move or speak. He was transformed into someone totally different, a disability that permeated through his entire body.
When I had my cancer, I saw myself in my father – as someone who was partially immobile because of the pain, as someone who my mother had to take care of. Because my cancer was eating away at my leg, I had to get it amputated when I was 15. I experienced the most horrendous treatments that scarred me for life. It was like walking through a field of fire. Sometimes I view myself as charred and disfigured, other times I see myself as strong, transformed into the artist that I was always born to be.
When my father died in 2005, I didn’t speak. At 6 years old, I said everything with my glassy child’s eyes. I felt an emptiness that would eventually echo throughout the rest of my life. My love for my father, and the chrome of emotions I feel for him will always be present. My father will live through me, and through the legacy that I will continue building for the both of us.
