IAS & Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos Galleries will be closed Dec. 21, 2024–Jan. 1, 2025.
Join us for an Artist Talk with Cian Dayrit on December 4, 2024. Dayrit will discuss his works, Feudal Fields, 2018 and Feudal Fields II: Tinang, 2024, on view in Seeing through Stone, in the context of his art practice and activism.
Feudal Fields and Feudal Fields II: Tinang intricately chart contemporary manifestations of colonial dispossession in the Philippines, when the Spanish claimed state ownership of the land and indentured farmers to feudal landowners. Despite the passing of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program in 1988, legally-recognized yet still landless agrarian reform beneficiaries continue to struggle for land and rights.
Feudal Fields, Dayrit’s earliest tapestry project, maps the massacre of farmers protesting on the sugar cane estate at Hacienda Luisita in 2004. Protests in Tinang in June 2022 are the subject of his latest artwork, Feudal Fields II: Tinang. During that action, artists, writers, and activists joined farmers to participate in an act of collective land cultivation known as bungkalan, a form of protest in which cash crops are uprooted and replaced with food crops. This led to the arrest of 83 activists, including the artist.
This event is free and open to the public.
Cian Dayrit is an artist whose work investigates notions of space, power and identity by subverting the workings of institutions such as the museums, the military and maps. His practice explores legacies of colonialism by responding to the conditions of marginalized communities while encouraging a critical reflection on privileged perspectives. While informed by the experience of colonialism from the perspective of the Philippines, his work nonetheless defies being tied to a specific position or location. Instead, his work and research cross over geopolitical and supranational bearings. Dayrit received his BFA at the College of Fine Arts in University of the Philippines where he is currently pursuing a masters in Geography. He is also one of the founding members of Sama-samang Artista Para sa Kilusang Agraryo (SAKA), an alliance of cultural workers advocating for land rights and food sovereignty. His work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions internationally such as Liberties Were Taken (2024) at the Blaffer Museum, Houston; Unravel (2024) Barbican, London and Stedelijk, Amsterdam; Stepping Softly on the Earth (2023) Baltic; Machinations (2023) at Reina Sofia, Madrid among others. Some of his work are part of collections in Lopez Museum and Library, Manila, Kadist Foundation, San Francisco, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Jameel Arts Center, Dubai, and Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio.
Image: Cian Dayrit, Feudal Fields (2018) and Feudal Fields II: Tinang (2024). Installation view in Seeing through Stone at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences. Photo by Mickey Ta.
