The sanguinyu or Kristang Seraphic aesthetic is primarily used to depict Kabesa, Ka-Kabesa and Ka-Kabeliang of the Kristang people, as well as to a lesser extent very individuated Kapitang or Elders, Xamang-Krismatrang, members of a Kabesa’s Dragonsguard or other leaders within the community. The aesthetic consists of depicting the individual with wings, whether angelic, demonic, dragonic, faerie, or of any other form or variant, a cowboy, cowgirl and cowhand hat indexing a leadership role, and optionally a halo and/or fire or a glow surrounding the individual’s body. Sanguinyu was officially used to represent the 14th, 15th and 16th Kabesa Tuan Benji Ultramar Benjamin Harris, Tuan Lautan Senja Ultramar Nathaniel Nonis and Tuan Jaazi Ultramar Jaasir Mahsom, and accepted and acknowledged as legitimate by the general public and the Government of the Republic of Singapore, in a normal neurotypical public context for the very first time on Wednesday, 4 June 2025 15:30 SGT at Lorong AI’s “The One About AI x Culture” AI Wednesdays event as part of Tuan Raja Naga Ultramar Kevin Martens Wong Zhi Qiang’s first public presentation since the Kristang Futures Declaration and the 2025 Singapore General Election, “Using AI for Cultural Revitalisation: Kristang as a Case Study“.
Sanguinyu is creolised out of a hybridisation of Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Sinitic and animist traditions that Kristang is descended from, and serves to remind the individual of their own superhuman commitments and abilities as Kabesa, the luminosity and numinosity that they often inadvertently end up displaying for other people in the community and beyond it, and the deep connection to Gaia and the living universe that enables the Kabesa to have such effects on reality.
For Kabesa or other leaders of the community who are especially body positive or in touch with their sensuality, physicality and/or sexuality as a primary component of their leadership role, Sanguinyu also reminds both them and the entire community of the sacredness of the body, and the tremendous responsibility that being so body positive also necessarily entails an awareness of, since the community has already previously struggled with intense projections about being too hedonistic, hypersexual or superficial.
Sanguinyu finally subverts decades and centuries of occluded sexual abuse within the community, as well as projections that Kristang people could never actually be holy or sacred as a result of all of this; it seeks to engender unconditional dignity and self-regard in terms of the body and of how one sees and appreciates one’s own body, and again therefore supports the community in processing intense intergenerational trauma as a result.