“Tanikala”

“Tanikala”, which means "chains" in english, is an installation art by a group of PUP

engineering students that shows a bird and it's nest inside a cage. Based on its title, it is not

literally meant. The art does not display any chain, but it does display the idea of being bound or

being not liberated. The nest, which is included in the art, has the miniature of the PUP Pylon

monument in it which tries to show how the university is being suspected as a nest of anti-

government groups like National People's Army (NPA). And the eggs in the nest symbolize

every PUPian, which tries to tell us how students are being seen as NPA members for fostering

activism inside the university. And the bird, being a grown one and being one which is able to

fly, still represents each and every student of the university. "Being able to fly" means that these

students have the 'urge' to fight for what they know is right and to fight for what they know will

benefit each and everyone by finding the ills that kills the society and by finding the truth despite

the presence of this cage.

The art does display, as well, the idea of chains being connected with one another. The

environment inside that cage symbolizes the whole context of the Polytechnic University of the

Philippines. At the same time, the university's context could also be compared to the current

situation of the Philippines- the system, the population, the stink, and etc. And this explains why

there is a figure of Pres. Duterte at the top of the cage- being the controller.

With regards to the entire art, they incorporated things which can be found everywhere

like newspapers, hays, eggshells, and etc. Incorporating real things that are aimed to convey

their real purposes helped other students to figure out what each thing does represent. Also,

they incorporated other materials which are repurposed for the use of art.
 As of Study.com, installation art is usually made in mixed media which means that it

uses more than one art medium. And it is evident in the art "Tanikala". There is painting (the

cage, the PUP Pylon monument, the bird), sculpture (modeling media: paper mache) and

drawing (they used paper as their common surface for drawing the figure of a bird and folding it

to form a 3- D figure).

Although the idea of a bird inside a cage that portrays its inability to freely fly is very

common, which could be anyone's thought about the very idea of the art at first, the group is still

able to make that idea (kind of) heavier- that being out of that small cage doesn't make the bird

free- that bird was never really free. Yes, it could fly as far as it could, it could fly as high as it

could, but that won't change the fact that it's still in a cage- It is unswervingly flying in an endless

cage. The farther the bird flies, the bigger the cage gets.