Visualizing Histories
by Mech Choulay and Jo Tanierla, Eunice Sanchez and Hul Kanha, Song Seakleng and Jel Suarez
Opening: Wednesday, 24 November 2021
Exhibition: 24 Nov – 18 Dec 2021
In English and Khmer
Sa Sa Art Projects
Visualizing Histories is an attempt to address the ever-changing landscape of historiography and memorialization. It seeks to explore art production in contemporary art as a vehicle to communicate difficult and unresolved narratives from the past and make sense of it in the current time.
Posed with the question, how does regional contemporary art aid in newer forms of historiography and remembering, the three Cambodian artists who were born after the Khmer Rouge (Mech Choulay, Hul Kanha, and Song Seakleng) and the three Filipino artists who were born after the Martial Law dictatorship and EDSA Revolution (Tanierla Jo, Sanchez Eunice, and Suarez Jel) together with Load Na Dito and Sa Sa Art Projects, have shared a space to converse about their backgrounds, their histories, and their understanding of truths.
Through this exploration in artistic collaboration, Jo and Choulay shared stories of seeing the unseen by focusing their energies on depicting the sectors in the peripheries. Reflecting on them in their works, we notice that the people are the actual primary sources of history as trauma manifests in the embodied. Eunice who balances her entanglements as being Ilocano and conscious about human rights, and Kanha who is attracted to themes of longing and nostalgia, centered their works on what is left and what is there to exist for after the different difficult experiences of both countries through the continuous process of mending seen through the act of repair and creating as a means to move forward. Finally, Jel and Seakleng chose to focus on the everyday and how each mundane event in our lives may shape us as individuals, citizens of each country, and members of the region.
We cap this whole exercise with the documentation of each conversation through the looped videos, sound clippings, and the screencaps from our meetings serving as archival material, a starting point for a digital collection of the partner organizations and collectives, and more importantly, as proof of making our histories as a region alive through activating relations between the artists, by providing an avenue to visualize them, share insights and experiences, and by providing continuity for educators to utilize the project format for future teaching. All of these materials will also be used as a resource in museum education programming and in schools to sensitively communicate these stories. With this, history is continuously activated, renewed, and reworked, and contemporary art is made accessible.
As we also occupy the physical space of Sa Sa Art Projects for the exhibition which serves as a means to culminate the project, we hope to question the notion of contemporary art spaces as sites that embody museum qualities of being a non-profit in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for education, study and enjoyment filled with works that serve as reverberating prompts for discourse on the issues of the past, opportunities of the present, and hopes or possibilities for the future.
-The Museum Collective
About Artists:
Jo Tanierla (b. 1989) is an artist born in Manila and is currently based in Quezon City, Philippines. He takes his time with his drawings and paintings. His works are resistive gestures against imperialism and its many insidious forms. Jo has an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from U.P. Diliman. In 2021, Jo was one of the winners of the Ateneo Art Awards – Fernando Zóbel Prize for Visual Art for his first solo show, Pagburo At Pag-alsa: Natural Depictions and Illustrated Prophecies (Gelacio, 1910) at UP Vargas Museum. He has two upcoming residencies in 2022 through the Anita Magsaysay-Ho Arts Program in Casa San Miguel, Zambales, Philippines and the Abungalow Residency in Negros Occidental, Philippines.
Mech Choulay (b. 1992) is a documentary filmmaker and a freelance journalist at VOD. Originally from Kandal province, her works center on human-interest storytelling, environmental and animal rights issues. Choulay had her works exhibited at SaSa Art Projects, Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center, TorTim Art Gallery, SEA Junction BACC Bangkok, and TERATOTERA Festival, Web festival in Japan In 2020, she received an award from Creative Generation 4 Awards. This year, she received three grants: Angkor Photo Festival grant , Citizen Engaged in Environmental Justice for all (CEEJA), SUMERNET for media – research partnership for environment reporting. Currently, she is also a Mekong Data-Journalism Fellow in 2021.sm
Eunice Sanchez (b. 1993) is an artist and a museum worker born in La Union and based in Manila. Her works mostly revolve around photography and alternative processes. Her practice engages with themes relating to preservation and perception. She has been part of group exhibitions in galleries around Manila such as Galerie Stephanie, Vetro Gallery, Post Gallery, and NOVA Gallery. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Photography at De La Salle - College of Saint Benilde and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology at De La Salle University. Currently, Eunice is doing an MA in Archaeology from the University of the Philippines-Diliman.
Hul Kanha (b.1999) is an artist based in Siem Reap Province and is currently pursuing her English language degree at the PUC university. Kanha feels art is essential to her soul as a mode of self-expression and is deeply connected to her daily artistic practice. Her multidisciplinary artworks incorporate photography and performance art with painting, paper cutting, and stencil techniques. In 2020, Kanha was the recipient of the Treeline Urban Resort Artist Grant in Siem Reap and was invited as a teaching artist in the NOMADIX Arts Festival in Siem Reap. In the same year, she also participated in group exhibitions throughout Cambodia as well as Galerie Lee in Paris and Artxchange Gallery in Seattle,USA.
Jel Suarez ((b. 1990) is a self-taught artist born in Manila and based in Bacolod, Negros Occidental. Her work is built on collage-making, and openly informed by the physicality of things. Jel primarily moves as a collector, hunter, de/constructor, arranger. She approaches collage as a way of responding to visual phenomena by restating images as open codes and texts in the process of becoming. She has been exhibiting her works since 2014, and has participated in art fairs in Manila (ALT Philippines 2020; Art Fair PH 2016-19), Hong Kong (Art Central HK 2017), and Singapore (AAF SG 2014). She was an artist-in-residence of Larga (Negros Occidental, Philippines) in 2019, and at Rimbun Dahan (Selangor, Malaysia) in 2017. Her solo exhibitions with West Gallery (2018 and 2020) and MO_Space Gallery (2019) were shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards, where she became the first recipient of it’s Italian Embassy’s Purchase Prize.
Song Seakleng (b.1997) is a photographer, filmmaker, and artist based in Phnom Penh. Originally from Kampong Thom Province, Seakleng finished his Media Management degree from the Royal University of Phnom Penh. He joined the group exhibition Possibility, Transferring, and Passing at Sa Sa Art Projects and directed Psycho which was selected in Chaktomuk Short Film Festival - Cambodian Highlight in 2019 while working as a production intern at Anti-Archive film company. He was one of the five awardees for Creative Generation 3 in 2020 and simultaneously directed Blossom In The Summer. He worked as an assistant lecturer for the third generation of Contemporary and Documentary Photography class at Sa Sa Art Projects and was invited to join as a Pisaot artist resident in 2021.
About Collaborators:
THE MUSEUM COLLECTIVE:
Founded on August 21, 2019, The Museum Collective is a Filipino collective of museum and cultural workers, students, educators, and artists that aspires to empower, connect and collaborate to promote contextualized and meaningful practice that responds to the needs of the times.
LOAD NA DITO
Load Na Dito is an artistic and research project based in Manila, Philippines. Developed as a homemade culture, currently located in Cubao, Quezon City, it uses any possible space as a site for knowledge sharing, inquiry and discussion. “Load na Dito”is a local top up system for cellphone credit, where you can load anywhere as long as you can see a sign “load na dito.” Developing it as a model, the initiative makes projects in different locations—building new energies to have “load.” By organizing and co-organizing a wide range of programs, Load na Dito hopes to critically address the questions of participation and collaboration in relation to the practice of contemporary art.
ASIAN CULTURAL COUNCILASIAN COUNCIL
The Asian Cultural Council advances international dialogue, understanding, and respect through cultural exchange activities in Asia and the United States to create a more harmonious and peaceful world. This mission is accomplished through fellowships and other programs that support individual artists, scholars, and arts professionals.
To date, ACC has supported over 6,000 exchanges across 26 countries and regions, and 16 artistic disciplines. As a grantmaking and grantseeking organization, ACC raises funds from individual, foundation, and corporate donors. ACC also convenes arts leaders, fostering dialogue around the importance of cultural exchange in developing understanding and respect across international and cultural borders.
Public Programs
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Panel Discussion of Visualizing Histories Moderated by John Alexis Balaguer
Saturday 27 November 2021, 4 pm (Cambodia), 5 pm (Philippine)
Catalogue
