NOT MANY people would turn their back on a booming career in television and modeling. But in 2006, Ala Paredes did just that, ditching showbiz and starting from scratch in Sydney, Australia.
A graduate of Ateneo’s AB Communication Arts program, the 23-year old Ala was at a crossroads. “I was doing modeling, hosting on TV,” she says. “I didn’t really have a regular nine to five so I had plenty of time to do nothing.”
Metamorphosis. When Ala Paredes walked into the Ampatuan trial, she transformed, right before the country’s eyes from model and TV host to artist in her own right Photo courtesy of Ala Paredes
She says this in a throwaway tone, belying the impact her morena skin and curls had on television and the whole beauty industry. With a look that was proudly, almost defiantly, naturally Filipina, she stood out in a sea of parlor-straightened hair and lotion-whitened skin, nabbing high-profile campaigns like Penshoppe and Johnson and Johnson from her more conventional-looking peers. Ala was so zeitgeist, in fact, that the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism felt compelled to build its inquiry on the beauty industry around her groundbreaking success.
This year, she resurfaces into the public consciousness, becoming the official court sketcher for the controversial Ampatuan case. Four years later and the spotlight’s on her again, though this time, for completely different reasons. Exit Ala Paredes, model/VJ/blogger. Welcome Ala Paredes, the artist.
On January 5, Ala entered Camp Crame and transformed, right before the country’s collective eyes, from the media personality of 2006, to an artist, a woman–one finally out of her father Jim Paredes’ shadow, an artist formidable in her own right.
She’s back in Manila on a now extended vacation. “It was just supposed to be Christmas, family, see my friends once, and then go,” she says.
On her initial vacation, she ran into a classmate from her Ateneo days. The classmate, as she found out, was now working in the Supreme Court, handling the Ampatuan case.
“I don’t know what made me ask her if she needed a courtroom artist,” Ala says. “She was like, ‘No, we don’t use those anymore. That’s a thing of the past. We have cameras now.’” A week later, the night before the trial, her classmate called, they decided to bar the media from the trial. They needed a courtroom sketch artist.
“Everyone was very deeply affected by the Maguindanao massacre,” she says, “even me, in Australia. I’d read about it and I was following the events as they were happening. When I was asked, I said yes without blinking an eye.”
This is, of course, using her art for a unique sort of cause, away from the books and graphic novels she’s always dreamt of illustrating. “I remember telling myself that I want to go places with my illustrations. I used to pray, ‘Dear Lord, take me places.’ This is my calling. He gave me these skills for a reason and I’m going to do the best I can wherever He takes me.”
She shares that “it’s tense, very tense” in the courtroom. And while, as she told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, she has tried to remain objective, she admits that the very nature of illustrating is subjective. “Even if you’re objective, just the fact that it’s being interpreted by an artist, it already loses some of its objectivity no matter how objective the artist thinks he is.”
She’s 26 but it feels like she’s lived enough lives–from model to migrant, from VJ to artist–for someone twice her age. It’s only when she talks about her dreams and future plans that you realize that she’s just five years out of college. “Would I have felt bad about myself if I never became anything?” she seems to be asking herself. “I guess I was always a go getter anyway. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a Paredes.”
