Now the thing I wanted to raise is that most so-called Christians always have a limited concept of the Christ image. They always think in terms of that person who lived in Palestine two thousand years ago. So the concept of Christ derives from a very obsaus

cure historical event, in many cases made up by his disciples. The point is that is very difficult for most people to contextualise their faith because the colonial packaging of the Christian faith has been deeply embedded in their consciousness and it’s hard to get away from that. So the figure at the centre is a woman – she is drinking with them and telling a joke and everybody is laughing around her. But the real joke is that people are laughing because they thought all along that Jesus was a man, and that Jesus was a Caucasian-looking guy, you know – all these conventional concepts about Jesus. I have a different image of Jesus, which is that of woman, a very ordinary-looking Filipino woman, who drinks with them and has stories to tell. The idea of laughing is very common among Filipinos – to laugh at their mistakes. It’s all part of understanding the culture and it’s also part of contextualising the concept of faith within the culture. I’ve been trying to come up with an acceptable marriage of some of my beliefs. It’s not a traditional or a conventional kind of belief system -- an ideology that I have developed as part of my involvement in mass struggles.

 "Emmaus"
Artist:  Emmanuel Garibay 
Oil on canvas - 50cm x 60cm
Manila, Philippines