---
title: "Folktale Week Nov 18 - Echo (Process Video)"
description: "Imagine living your entire life hidden indoors and becoming a living echo of the past! 🌼"
url: "https://artmihan.com/folktale-week-nov-18---echo-process-video-"
published: "2025-11-19T00:01:00Z"
updated: "2026-08-30T20:06:51Z"
authors: ["Amihan K. de Leon"]
categories: ["*+:｡. Process ₊˚⊹⋆"]
tags: ["philippines","art challenge","clip studio paint"]
---

# Folktale Week Nov 18 - Echo (Process Video)

Imagine living your entire life hidden indoors and becoming a living echo of the past! 🌼

![](https://artmihan.com/assets/uploads/cd2f2ed260d0d45a6a47ca0fa7242716.png)

Binukot is an indigenous Filipino cultural practice most recently practiced by the Panay Bukidnon people. It entails secluding a young woman in a single room since childhood with the expectation that seclusion will result in a higher value to marital suitors in the future. In isolation, the Binukot princess is not exposed to the sun, not allowed to work, and is even accompanied by her parents when she takes a bath in the river at night to ensure she is not seen.

She spends much of her time learning oral lore and traditional dances from her parents and grandparents. This makes the Binukot excellent epic chanters and repositories of their history.

I chose the Binukot princess for this prompt because she is sort of a keeper of echoes. She preserves traditions and oral storytelling that echo through generations and time. In a way, she is a living echo of the past considering she is not given freedom to do much else. In Baybayin, the ancient script of the Philippines, I wrote the titles of each poem in the Sugidanon Epic of Panay on the echoes around her. (Fun fact: I learned to write in Baybayin when I was a kid so I could use it in my diary where no one could read it, so I’m glad I could use that skill for this piece!)

While I can find some beauty in the seriousness in which they honor traditional stories, the drastic measures saddens me. There is a threat of punishment by death to any man who even looks at her. That is the extent of her isolation. I tried to draw her with a melancholy expression to highlight the loneliness she must feel.

Source: The Aswang Project

[Video](https://editor.blogmaker.app/web/assets/uploads/6bf574dfca6d75776e7de50343db537d.mp4)