An art show featuring a poster of Jesus Christ with a wooden penis glued to his face was closed yesterday after Philippine President Benigno Aquino III intervened amid threats, vandalism and claims of blasphemy.
The closure came as a church group in the mainly Catholic country announced it was filing charges against the Cultural Center of the Philippines over the installation by artist Mideo Cruz, which it said violated religion.
Aquino told reporters yesterday he had called the government-run center the day before and told its staff he opposed the work of art.
Photo: EPA
“I did stress the idea that there are rights, but if those rights hurt the rights of others, there is something wrong and that is not covered by the law. I reminded them that there is no freedom that is absolute,” he said.
The cultural center said in a statement that threats to its board of directors had increased as media attention to the exhibit sparked religious outrage, prompting them to close the show.
“With an increasing number of threats to persons and property ... the board of the Cultural Center of the Philippines have decided to close down the main gallery,” the statement said, without mentioning Aquino.
It did not specify the nature of the threats or say whether they were reported to police, but cited an incident on Thursday last week, when a couple vandalized the controversial work and tried to set it on fire.
Catholic activist Jo Imbong said a case was being filed with the government ombudsman accusing the center’s management of violating a law against “immoral doctrines that violate religion.”
Imbong, executive director of a group of Christian lawyers, said that the center’s management would also face formal administrative complaints urging the government to suspend or fire those responsible.
“We are simply invoking what the law says. The law sets a standard not to offend religion. The law says freedom of expression is not absolute. There are limits to all freedoms,” she said.
The center could not immediately be contacted for comment.
The Poleteismo (Polytheism) exhibition — which also featured other artists — opened on June 7, but media discussion increased in recent weeks, provoking a raft of condemnations.
In addition to the Jesus poster, Cruz’s work included a cross made of discarded wood with a carving of a penis attached and an icon of Jesus with a red clown nose and Mickey Mouse ears.
The center had earlier rejected calls for the exhibit’s closure, saying it was covered by freedom of expression guaranteed under the Constitution.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of