Abe Road: Agony and Ecstasy of Filipino Diaspora

ABE Road: The Agony and Ecstasy of Filipino Diaspora (2014) Ruston Banal’s iconic photographic work, ABE Road: The Agony and Ecstasy of Filipino Diaspora is a powerful depiction cultural translocation and connection. The photo was shot in Time Square, New York in 2014. Banal is a visual anthropologist based in his hometown Betis, Pampanga. The majority of his works focus on the spectacle of Catholic religion and heritage of woodcarving in Betis. The image is a study of human diaspora and cultural displacement juxtaposed with familiar image of a pop culture as the bodies of the flagellants are lined up crossing the street of New York to simulate the 1969 Abbey Road album of the Beatles. Flagellation or magdarame is Kapampangan in origin which is basically a pre-colonial period tradition that shows the co-suffering of a person to carry a burden in ways of flagellating himself. ‘Damayan’ in Tagalog or ‘Abayan (ABE)’ in Kapampangan, thus “Magdarame… Abe Road” word came in as a play of words with the Beatles Abbey Road. The translocated position of the group of penitent performing the Lenten ritual of sufferance from Pamapanga to New York, evokes the complexities of identity in Filipino diaspora, the dispersion of Filipino from their original homeland across the globe, and the emotional suffering they have to endure in foreign land in search of a better life. Banal describe this piece as a a symbol of the Filipino’s agony and ecstasy, the willingness to carry the burden, to face the hardships in order to supplement a family in the Philippines.