Sagada Festival, Landscapes and Portraits

Submitted by Jorge Andrada

The Sanctuary Gallery at Maryknoll cordially invites you to the artist's reception of "RITUAL/LIFE", an exhibition of Sagada photographs, 1976-1982, by Joachim Voss on Saturday, January 12, 2002 at 4:00 p.m. The exhibit runs until March 20, 2002.

Voss, a German national who immigrated to Canada, first traveled to Sagada, Mountain Province in 1976. He was then traveling through Southeast Asia in search of a place for his doctoral field work in Anthropology.

On the advice of Eduardo Masferre whom he met in Bontoc, he visited Sagada and was fascinated by the beauty of the landscape and the people's rich ritual life.

Voss left Sagada in 1980, graduated with his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Toronto and worked in Rwanda and Canada. He is currently the Director General of the Centro International de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) based in Cali, Colombia.

RITUAL/LIFE features photographs of the 1980 Dangtey ceremony and Begnas festival, Sagada landscapes and portraits. The Dangtey ceremony, performed every ten years as a periodic demonstration of village unity, is a composite of several rituals. During the rites, the souls of Sagada people, both living and dead, are called upon to return to their respective dap-ay (ward) to signify solidarity. Guardian spirits and ancestors' souls are invoked in the ritual prayers for good harvest and community protection.

The Begnas, Sagada's major community religious festival, was originally a war ritual now remodeled for the furtherance of community welfare and sanctifying the agricultural cycle.

The Sanctuary Gallery is located at Maryknoll, Campo Sioco, Baguio City. For inquiries, please call (074) 442-4602 or 442-4926 or send an email to mscbag@mozcom.com.