FESTOONED above the halls of the UST Museum of Arts and Sciences are dozens of large-scale Christmas ornaments or parol made by Interior Design students for their annual Christmas exhibit titled “Christmaseum.”
The 19th edition of the anual Christmas exhibit opted for a simpler and “more traditional” theme with the use of basic art materials such as bamboos, woods, ribbons, papel de japon and crepe papers in making the mostly star-shaped ornaments.
“The parol has taken on the meaning of being a Filipino symbol of Christmas,” curator and UST CFAD professor Mary Venturina-Bulanadi told the Varsitarian. “It is the closest one that identifies with the Filipino heart.”
Knotted coconut fronds used in making the Filipino bag bayong made one parol stand out from the rest because of its more traditional yet unconventional structure.
The lines of the hanging ornaments lead to a nativity scene inside a bahay kubo adorned by Christmas lights.
A collaborative work of Bulanadi and UST Museum’s director Fr. Isidro Abano, the Holy family and the Three Kings were dressed in paper mache to lessen the western symbol and to focus more on the Filipino culture.
“Be it a small and simple family parol, to the most elaborate and ostentatious display of lights in the giant parols—the meaning remains: an expression of faith, hope and the victory of light over darkness,” Bulanadi said.
The exhibit runs until Jan. 19, 2018.
