Ronaldo Ruiz's reply to our project: Timeline of performance art

Ronaldo Ruiz, 2012-04-05

When I was in college, I have already been doing actions, but I didn’t know I was actually doing performance art. During the 1992 annual foundation day in my school, we took advantage of the event to hold something that would draw attention to our organization. I performed with mud covering my body the Ilocano traditional ritual for spiritual cleansing called atang. When the security guards saw the commotion and came to the rescue, the performance had to end and I ran to the university gym to clean up and change into normal clothes.

Timeline of performance art

Eileen Legaspi Ramirez: How did you transition into performance from traditional art production (2-D, 3-D), gallery-based work? What was your personal impetus for engaging in performance?

Ronaldo Ruiz: When I was in college, I have already been doing actions, but I didn’t know I was actually doing performance art. During the 1992 annual foundation day in my school, we took advantage of the event to hold something that would draw attention to our organization. I performed with mud covering my body the Ilocano traditional ritual for spiritual cleansing called atang. When the security guards saw the commotion and came to the rescue, the performance had to end and I ran to the university gym to clean up and change into normal clothes.

R.R.: I only found out that what I did was a performance when the day after I got called into the office of Dean Florencio Concepcion. I thought that I would get into trouble, but instead I was told to research about performance art in the school library. The following years, my fellow students were already excited to see the performances that we would show, and it became an informal school foundation day tradition.

While I was studying art, I have always practiced painting and performance side by side. For me, performance was more free, spontaneous and instinctual. It started as something simply attention catching, but I realized over time that it was a better venue for self-expression for myself, for all the things I could not interpret through painting.

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