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.

Neferti X. M. Tadiar is an interdisciplinary, postcolonial feminist scholar of Philippine cultural practice, social imagination, and global political economy. She is currently the Moa Martinson Guest Professor (2024-2025) at Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden, and Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University in New York city. She is the author of several books on Philippine culture, literature, and social movements, and globalization. Her most recent books are Life-Times of Becoming Human (2022), a treatise on life expenditure and global humanity, which won the 2023 Philippine National Book Award for Philosophy; and Remaindered Life (2022), an extended meditation on the disposability and surplus of life-making under contemporary conditions of global empire, which was awarded The ASA John Hope Franklin Prize as Best Book in American Studies in 2023.