Congratulations on the 108th birthday (August 8, 1914 – January 26, 2021} of Manlilikha ng Bayan Yabing Masalon Dulo!
Yabing Masalon Dulo
Textile Weaver
Blaan
Polomolok, South Cotabato
Yabing Masalon Dulo lived as a youth in a milieu with a density of stimuli that encouraged skill and imagination. When Fu Yabing’s generation took from the forest fibrous material that they worked into art, the art in turn supported the integrity of natural/cultural connection.
Blaan abaca-ikat weaving is one of the most challenging and beautiful works found among the indigenous peoples of Mindanao. Their tradition is related to that of their immediate neighbors in Southwestern Mindanao, the Bagobo and the T’boli, but is also culturally distinct from them.
It may indeed be suggested that Fu Yabing and her art were unconnected to the relevant order of things. They have been loosened free from their old coordinates in both nature and culture. Living in radically different circumstances from her arboreal birthplace, among a people who in that past engaged precise reciprocal instead of market relations, she carried on with an exquisite tradition. But she had always faced with disjunct between systems by deploying her gift: the expert making of fine warp-ikat textiles. With the highest recognition, clearly, she prevailed.
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