A Foreign Father and a Child in the Dark: Loribelle Spirovski

The Philippines is a culturally diverse nation with a particularly complex history. The introduction of Catholicism to the islands in the 15th Century by Portuguese traders was followed swiftly by the conversion of the people under the church's banner. Spanish claimants eagerly undertook the enforced indoctrination of the population. The Spaniards would rule for centuries until they ceded ownership to the United States in 1898. The new rulers were followed by the brutal occupation by the Imperial Japanese army during World War 2. Despite a history of violence and dispossession, the people of the Philippines are known for their warmth, generosity and openness. 

Spirovski’s exhibition, A Foreign Father and a Child in the Dark, is a deeply moving investigation into her earliest memories of family and place woven into the tarnished societal tapestry in which she grew up. Upon moving to Santa Ana at five years of age and for the following four years prior to moving to Australia to follow her father Spirovski regularly attended the church of Our Lady of the Abandoned with her mother. This experience left an indelible impression on the young Spirovski. Outside the citadel of church walls, vendors sold garlands of Sampaguita flowers, scapular medals and colourful ropes of rosaries. Immediately behind them, the church’s smog-stained façade loomed large and beggars, mostly children, lingered. These incongruities continued upon entering the church. Brilliant daylight instantly faded into a smothering darkness and under the eerie glow of candles, a life-sized statue of Mother Mary watched over her congregants. For Spirovski, the statue of a tortured Christ his fibreglass skin, burgundy blood and unnatural height fuelled many nightmares. Beyond this area lay a magnificent, gilded altarpiece, statues of apostles in resplendent robes and the voices of a choir that filled the room with warmth. There the young girl would lie on the kneelers and close her eyes.

While living in Santa Ana, Spirovski adopted an orphaned macaque. Taken from the wild and domesticated, the monkey’s caged existence becomes a wider metaphor for Spirovski’s sense of constriction in the Philippines. The macaque, however, did not fill the void left by her father who, due to the war in the Balkans, was compelled to stay in Australia as a means of supporting his new family. After meeting her father for the first time at age seven, Spirovski would pray for their family to reunite. It is these deeply personal anecdotes that Spirovski so elegantly laces into fabric of her works.