“Living on Loring”
Art
for Social Change
An
Exhibition by: Romina A. Diaz, Ann Wizer & Wild Cats Girls
Angel Shaw
Curator
March
8-31, 2008
“It is social art: art
with a conscience. Emotions, not just colors, paint a
truly human picture of the reality of poverty.”
-
Romina A. Diaz
“In doing so, we aim to
illustrate that they entitled to the same things as
everybody else: decent shelter, basic education, proper
healthcare, the right to choose.”
-
Ann Wizer
Two women. Two artists.
One is established, while the other is just starting out.
Both have lived in Pasay, and both are global nomads.
Photographer Romina A.
Diaz, who is half-Filipino and half-Italian, is able to
step into the world of Loring Street as one of its main
residents, while socially oriented artist Ann Wizer, a
half-Norwegian/half-Lebanese American, participates in it
from the periphery.
But their passion is one,
the social consciousness is the same. Together, they
journey to the end of
Loring Street, where Romina and her family lives and Galleria Duemila is located, and
where a large number of informal settlers has been living
across from them for decades.
The project focuses on the young
girls (ages 10-15) who reside in this area. Society often
ignores girls like them: girls living in squalor, denied
decent shelter, basic education, and proper healthcare,
forced to become full-time mothers to their younger
siblings, trying to survive in the huddled mass of
shanties they call home.
During the course of a
10-week intensive photography workshop, through the lens
of Romina’s camera and the cameras that have been given to
the girls, we will peek into their lives and try to
understand them. The girls of Loring Street are also
making ‘dollhouses’ out of balikbayan boxes: these
will become representations of their lives, their homes,
and their dreams.
Together with Romina, Ann
is producing Finding Sita public art. By
re-contextualizing the girl’s works and photos within the
locus of the female archetype of Sita (the heroine in the
classic Hindu epic poem The Ramayana), they aim to
make statements about the speciousness of mainstream
advertising, compared to the harsh, hand-to-mouth
existence of the women in Manila’s urban poor communities.
These will be installed as postcards,
billboards and stickers in
massively populated areas in Metro Manila, particularly in
Serendra and Fort
Bonifacio.
Furthermore, the public will
be invited to participate in the project through the Living
on Loring Online Journal (http://livingonloring.wordpress.com).
Here, the progress of the girls who are participating in
Diaz’ Living on Loring workshop are being continually
documented by the artists, together with writers Anabel
Bosch and Ginny Mata. They will feature the stories and the
photos and dollhouses of the girls, as well as discuss the
processes involved in completing the project as a whole.
Everything is a
collaboration: between Ann and Romina, between the girls and
their photographic subjects, between their reality and their
dreams. As the project evolves, the girls continue to learn
how to see their lives objectively through the camera lens.
In doing so, they gain greater confidence in themselves and
in their abilities, and even begin to hope for a better
future for themselves. And the public - those who are brave
enough to look upon this work with honest, uncompromising
eyes - are irrevocably affected by and changed by the
experience.
This exhibit was born during
a discussion for a larger project: TRADE ROUTES: CONVERGING
CULTURES – SOUTHEAST ASIA AND ASIA AMERICA conceived by
Angel Velasco Shaw. This is a multi-year series of four
projects involving inter-regional, inter-country, and
international cross cultural collaborations and exchanges
between women. ”Living on Loring/Finding Sita” is the
kick-off venue of its pilot project entitled Woman As
(Mythical) Hero, which was inspired by the classic Hindu
epic poem, The Ramayana.
The project is designed to
provide diverse opportunities for women to break through
barriers and allow them to share their creative practices,
thought processes, social struggle and cultural concerns.
The participants consist of media artists working in video,
film, new media and media installation; performance artists;
visual artists working in painting, photography, sculpture
and mixed media; academic scholars and curators and
grassroots community workers.
Working under the guidance
of TRADE ROUTES project director Angel Velasco Shaw,
this project is supported by the Arts Network Asia, Asian
Cultural Council, and New York
University. It is also made possible through the generous support of Chromograph,
Inc., Digi-Ads Inc., Galleria Duemila, Kameraworld, LBC Hari
ng Padala, Luneta Advertising, Inc and Signmedia.
To coincide with
International Women’s Month, the Living on Loring exhibit is
set to open at Galleria Duemila, 210 Loring Street Pasay
City on March 8, 2008.
For enquiries, please email
the assistant to the project director Ginny Mata at
ginny.mata@gmail.com, or Mimi Santos of Galleria Duemila at
+632-833-9815/831-9990 and
duemila@mydestiny.com.
About the Curator:
Angel Velasco Shaw is a
film/video maker, writer, cultural activist, curator and
educator. She is co-editor of the anthology, “Vestiges of
War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an
Imperial Dream: 1899-1999” (New York University Press,
2002). She co-curated Empire and Memory: Repercussions
and Evocations of the 1899 Philippine-American War, a
film/video exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. She
was a core faculty member in the Asian/Pacific/ American
Studies Program at New York University where she taught
media, cultural, and community studies courses from
1995-2006. She has also taught at Hunter College, Columbia
University, The New School For Social Research, and Pratt
Institute. Shaw is currently working on a multi-year series
of cultural exchange projects called “Trade Routes:
Converging Cultures—Southeast Asia and Asia America.”
“Living on Loring/ Who’s Sita?” is the flagship project of
this series.
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