Through his own brand of syncretism, JC Mariategue adopts a unique and unsettling method of tackling scenes of devotion and religiosity, aiming to reveal the darker underside of spectacle and ornament—qualities normally associated with adoration and purity. In Sa Salaw ng mga Dalangin, he highlights agony rather than ecstasy, constructing a world that appears anything but holy, yet remains captivating and hallucinatory in its own bizarre way.

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As a direct commentary on one of the Philippines’ enduring religious festivals—the fertility dance of Obando in Bulacan— Mariategue translates the physical realm of movement and trance into the visual plane and reveals in this work the inherent doggedness, grit, and inventiveness of the Filipino imagination—qualities that resonate with the iconoclastic images of legend, resistance, and paganism found across the regions. In presenting the fine line that demarcates the taboo from the sacred; holiness from orgiastic excess; devotion from vulgarity—we can see how everything is caught within the dance. As the old Tagalog prayer in Obando goes: halina’t umindak at manalangin.

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— Cocoy Lumbao Jr.