Skin Script



Balat Pagsulat

magdala sa liwanag
sa tinta
sa balat
mga dantaon
tinuklas at niwala
mga tao
kaninong dila
mabuhay
sa pagtataanan
sa mga lupa
sa kabila nang dagat



Skin Script

bring to light
in ink
on skin
centuries
found and lost
people
whose tongues
survive
in flight
to lands
across the sea





“When the Spaniards first arrived in Luzon, they found the Filipinos of the Manila Bay region so literate in an indigenous script called baybayin that the missionaries printed Juan de Plasencia’s Doctrina Christiana in the Philippine script with wood-blocks in Tagalog in 1593.”

-William Henry Scott, (Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History)


I am fascinated with letterforms and their capacity to tell stories—not just through words, but also in the meaning embodied in the gestures and marks themselves. Calligraphy is a platform for power and subversion. It is a vehicle for definition, a means of branding identity, and a spiritual path (New Day Publishers, Quezon City, 1984)


Despite its eminence amongst pre-colonial cultures, the indigenous script Baybayin (also known as Alibata) virtually disappeared from popular use in the Philippines. In the 1990’s, after over a hundred years in obscurity, a few artists in California discovered the script in obscure academic studies and brought it back to life by tattooing it on the skins of Filipinos in the US. Because of the Internet, it is now a global phenomenon.
What I find compelling in the story of Baybayin’s disappearance and resurrection is that it is a metaphor for people in diaspora everywhere. Baybayin today is a mark of defiance and self-determination. We discover and define ourselves through our symbols. In learning Baybayin myself and piecing together its story through research and interviews, I felt like I had the privilege of both peering back in time and looking into a mirror.


For her installation at Project Row Houses, Skin Script (2010) engages the Filipino and surrounding communities around Baybayin, an almost forgotten indigenous Filipino script that predates the Spanish colonization but was virtually eliminated by the end of 400 years of colonial rule. It has enjoyed a resurgence in the US in the form of tattoos as a way to mark and trace identity.

Lee Mangahas layers calligraphic painting, video, animation, and performance. Mangahas’ work has been featured at venues such as the Pacific Asia Museum in Los Angeles, the Euphrat Museum of Art, Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo Costa Rica, the Oakland Museum of California, the San Francisco Apature Festival, and the Arario Gallery in New York.

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