Paniniwala

What do we believe, and why do we believe in it? Paniniwala explores the evolution of faith as a cultural force, and how it has been shaped, institutionalized, and even weaponized throughout history. In this exhibition, Emmanuel Garibay dissects belief not as an abstract ideal but as a lived reality influenced by socio-political factors. His works challenge the ways by which faith has been used to impose identity and mold public consciousness.

Belief, according to Garibay, is not always freely chosen—it is often conditioned. In Kumbinsi, faith is forced
through rhetoric, authority, and ritual captured in the act of coercion. The Spanish friars of the colonial era framed conversion as salvation, Throughout Spanish colonization, friars convinced Filipinos that salvation required abandoning their indigenous gods. The Church’s approach was presented as a path to redemption, but in truth, it served to establish control. Over time, the colonized not only accepted the foreign religion but also internalized inferiority.

If persuasion initiates, Kolonya depicts its consequences. The work primarily echoes how colonial rule defined Western civilization and Christianity as superior, conditioning an entire people into self-erasure. Through compulsory baptisms, renaming, and education, faith became an instrument of submission that (mis)aligned Filipinos with foreign ideals at the cost of their native identity. Today, traces of Kolonya still persist in the worship of European and American cultures over our own. The narrative of domination concludes in Dakip, which means captivity. A stark image of a white man gripping the severed head of a brown man, while holding a book with a red apple on its cover. The apple, a symbol of both knowledge and temptation, underscores how American colonial education was designed not to empower but to separate Filipinos from their indigenous roots. By capturing minds, colonizers did not just control the land but also our stories, and hence, our being and belonging.

The process of indoctrination reaches its peak in Doksolohiya, which exposes belief as a spectacle that is no longer about spirituality, but about obedience and institutional preservation. The Trinity meant to embody divine power is reduced to a dysfunctional hierarchy: the Father sits in silence, the Son surveils rather than saves, and the Holy Spirit is burdened by the weight of absurd authority. The cathedral, once a place of worship, is now a grotesque circus where faith is manipulated for political interest and economic gain. Santa Claus, transformed into an arms dealer, relates to the commercialization and militarizationm of religion,
revealing how institutions co-opt belief. Yet even in persuasion, domination, conditioning and captivity, resistance is possible.

In Tawid belief shifts from submission to action, depicting its reclamation as a force of liberation. The work portrays a lone protester standing on a bridge leading to Malacañang, holding a placard partially revealing “IBAGSAK” or overthrow. The image echoes a recent revolution, where faith in justice ignited a movement that toppled an oppressive dictatorship. This indicates faith in justice and the power of resistance as sites to overcome the shackles of control – pushing forth the nature and essence of history. Here, it is clear that belief alone is not enough and it must be paired with the struggle for truth, often initiated by the lone voices willing to take a stand and become the embodiment of choice in between oppression and freedom.

At its core, Paniniwala questions what we choose to revere and who benefits from that reverence. As much as it dramatizes the ironies, distortions and fragmentations of our current systems of belief, it also departs from what bounds us and to step into the possibilities of the unbound.