Sino-Filipino Artistic Collaboration: Agency via Ivory Sculpture Production in Seventeenth-Century Colonial Manila

Abstract

The Hispano-Philippine style of ivory sculpture production in colonial Manila is almost synonymous with the growth of Spain’s global empire from the sixteenth century onward. These sculptures have been studied by historians and art critics alike in terms of Latin American consumer demand, marketability, Catholic devotion and conversion, and “Chineseness,” among other veins of inquiry. Common across these investigations is discussion of the significance of Chinese immigrants within the Spanish colony, who have been consistently identified as the creators of these sculptures. One community of artisans important to Philippine sculpture-making, however, has been understudied: the native Filipinos of colonial Manila, by far the largest group in the city. Why has the role of native Filipinos, despite being documented as painters and sculptors contemporaneous with the Chinese immigrants, been disregarded in the art-historical record of ivory sculpture production? In this article, I address these “silences” within the Hispano-Philippine sculptural archive by historicizing the sociocultural milieu of colonial Manila, performing visual analysis informed by postcolonial theory, and interrogating commonly referenced sources and narratives, an endeavor I maintain will enable art historians to contextualize these sculptures within a larger imperial, intercultural, and intersubjective framework of artistic creation.