The artist reflects on collaboration, vulnerability, and creating work that exists beyond the limits of a single medium.

PHOTOGRAPHY Joseph Bermúdez
CREATIVE DIRECTION Paolo Chua
STYLING Markarvin

What does your world look like creatively these days?
I’d use the word “collective”. I feel like my work in recent years, especially the past year and this year, has grown exponentially in terms of the people involved in it. My work used to look within. Now I’m trying to test the systems my work exists in with other people and seeing how my methods change other people’s work and ways of making. It’s quite interesting and I’m learning a lot from it, too. It feels transitional in a way. But I also feel like my work is always in flux. I never stick to one medium. I’m always flipping from one method to another, from one process to another, but I think my work rests well in that state.
How has your work changed compared to when you first started, especially as you’ve grown more comfortable with yourself over time?
My earlier works were a lot about grief, my grief toward my body and the way it exists in the world. A lot of my earlier work was investigative in that sense, trying to understand what I was going through and my position within space. Then, midway through my practice, I started moving in the opposite direction, toward abstraction and disappearance as a mode to quell power. A lot of my work became about abstracting my body, abstracting portraits and things like that.
Now I’m trying to become even more abstract, to the point where I feel like I’m yearning to become space itself, to be somewhat of a platform for other people to course their work through or help enable work to be done. So from all those portraitures and attempts to seek an image of myself, it’s now become more about seeing myself in other people. My work has also changed exponentially in scale. Over the past year, we’ve been building orchestras and museum-based works that feel much bigger than me. Most of my recent exhibitions have also been done collectively, sometimes with upwards of 12 to 20 people working on them.
What kinds of stories, people or perspectives do you find yourself gravitating toward lately?
I work a lot through energy. Energy is definitely something I gravitate toward, a specific energy, a specific authenticity. We’re in an age of hyper-image, hyper-visuality. Everything feels like a regurgitation of something or someone else. It’s hyper-referential now. You’re not just referencing something, you’re referencing something that already references something else. I think because of that, I’m really interested in some form of purity.
I love making work that’s ephemeral, things that will never repeat, things you only get to consume when you sit with them for an hour or so, and then they disappear. A lot of my work has become installative and site-specific in that way. It only exists within that space and time, then it dissipates. I’m not as concerned with longevity or legibility. I really just want to paint a certain feeling, a certain expression, at a certain time. And when that time passes, I’m okay with letting the work go along with it.
As someone working in a creative industry, do you feel like there’s more space now for different perspectives and identities than before?
I think there’s definitely more space, but there still isn’t enough support in terms of resources, especially in the art world. We still look toward Western institutions for support because locally, it’s very rare to get that kind of backing, or if you do, it’s usually not enough to actually make the work you want to make. So, while I recognize that there’s been progression, there’s still a lot of violence within these spaces. There’s still pressure to arrive at a certain correctness or legibility, depending on the market you’re occupying.
I’ve really tried my hardest to exist outside of that system. Most of my work now is commission-based or collective, which is much more interesting to me. If the work isn’t necessarily for the market and instead comes from a genuine desire to make, then that’s what fulfills me. As long as the work stays true to my vision or our collective vision, that’s really what matters to me. But we still need much stronger infrastructure here to support different voices properly.

Have you ever felt pressure to present yourself a certain way in your industry?
At first, I practiced a kind of perfectionism. The aesthetics of my work early on were very shaped toward becoming something, rather than simply shaping themselves. Now I’m less concerned with the end result and more interested in the process itself. I think my main medium is really process, regardless of what material or medium I’m working with. As long as things course through my methods and processes, and the work fulfills that, I’m not as concerned with the final form anymore. A lot of my work also uses improvisation as a method, so the work really only exists fully when it’s being performed or experienced. So yes, there was pressure before, but not in the same way anymore. I think now I stand more fully in myself.
What kind of conversations do you hope your work opens up?
The strength of my work is affect. It touches people emotionally because it’s vulnerable and personal. Allowing space for my collaborators to also surface that level of softness and vulnerability gives audiences room to lend their own feelings to the work. That’s what interests me about where my work is heading. The more it expands outside of myself, the more fulfilling it becomes for me.
What parts of yourself naturally find their way into your work, even unintentionally?
I think my movement. A lot of my work appears rigid because it’s often very clean and technical. When I engineer or build spaces, everything is blueprinted and designed very precisely. But once everything is installed and in place, I think my gestures, my softness and the way I move through the world start filtering into the work. So even if the veneer is structured and clean, there’s still softness moving underneath it.
At this point in your career, what excites you most about where your work could still go?
I’m most excited by the possibility of becoming everything and nothing at the same time. If you trace my work, it’s always very different from the last thing I made. I want to continue working across more media, never settle and always chase the next shape or form. Hope is also something that carries me through.

MAKEUP Luis Buñag
HAIR Charlotte Justiniani
LIGHTING DIRECTOR Rojan Maguyon
PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANT Ruby Pedregosa
STYLIST’S ASSISTANT Amer Jheck Afghan R. Franco

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