Interview held in the lead up to Radical Hospitality - Kain Na Tayo! in collaboration with Next Wave in April 2023.
Next Wave and Saluhan team up for a unique eight-hour event bringing together artists, chefs, musicians, and storytellers to guide audiences through a series of installations and performances, illustrating the ingenuity of Filipino food culture.
Influenced by Maria Orosa, the Filipina food scientist behind one of the Philippines’ most beloved ingredients—banana ketchup—Radical Hospitality: Kain Na Tayo! draws on her creativity to invite audiences to explore issues of climate crisis and consumption through diasporic and intergenerational perspectives. Maria’s use of native fruits and vegetables in product manufacture helped combat the food insecurities experienced in the Philippines throughout the early twentieth century; establishing a legacy that continues to influence contemporary Filipino cuisine today.
Read the full article online.
Documentation of Un-holy Balikbayan Workshop by Kenneth Suico and Bea Rubio-Gabriel. Photo by Sharni Hodge.
2021 Carstairs Grant winner and Artistic Collective of Filipinx/o artists, Saluhan, used the grant to support Dialekto, a series of free artist-led workshops in visual arts, performance, music, and storytelling at Siteworks and Footscray Community Arts in March to May 2022.
On receiving the grant Saluhan said, ‘Receiving the Carstairs Prize in 2021 enabled us to realise our Dialekto project in-person and online, pay our artists, and enhance the overall reach and visibility of Saluhan as a Filipinx arts collective. We connected with other communities of colour through artist-led workshops, screenings, and events at Siteworks and Footscray Community Arts, leading to new projects, collaborations, and residency opportunities for the collective in 2022 and 2023. We are extremely grateful to NAVA for providing this essential platform to us and for their commitment to championing socially-engaged and multidisciplinary arts practices like ours.’
Read the full press release online.
Filmed by Madeline Bishop, excerpt created by Saluhan Collective.
Saluhan participated in the ‘Making Space’ Residency program run by Arts Moreland in partnership with Siteworks. Saluhan artists, Aida Azin, Catherine Ortega-Sandow, and MJ Flamiano participated in the interview about Saluhan’s residency project, ‘Dialekto’.
Watch the full video interview online.
Photo by Anatol Pitt.
Finding a connection
The collective is not just limited to artists but is a mix of creative individuals.
“We are not first-generation or second-generation Filipinos, most of us are interracial and we don’t all look the same We are not connected to language or connected to culture, we might not all look the same it became a space for us to hold and explore what Filipino identity is,” says MJ Flamiano, visual artist, producer, and community arts worker.
Listen to the full interview with Catherine Ortega-Sandow and MJ Flamiano online.
Photo by Lucy Foster.
The National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) is pleased to announce Saluhan as the recipient of the 2021 Carstairs Prize for socially-engaged arts projects.
Saluhan will use the $10,000 prize to develop Dialekto, a multidisciplinary arts project of free workshops and events in visual arts, sound, cooking and storytelling at Siteworks, led by Saluhan artists for local communities of colour. This will be followed by a curated group exhibition of participant works in 2022.
“We are thrilled to receive the Carstairs Prize in 2021 and thank NAVA for their generous support of our collective and their commitment to championing socially-engaged arts practice,” said Saluhan. “The funding will enable us to advocate for an alternative model of contemporary arts practice that considers creativity and connection as vital to the wellbeing of both our artists and our communities. Maraming salamat po.”
Read the full media release online.
Photo and interview by Leah Jing.
You focus on ‘exploring fragments of Filipinx history through speculation’ with artworks that ‘blur fact and fiction’ as a strategy for contemplating new futures. How did did you come to this as a method?
I have a persistent interest in the nuanced histories of the Philippines and the intentions of its historians and colonisers. Like most cultural histories, it’s cloaked in uncertainty and doesn’t fit into the canon of material widely-available in Australia. So, it can be tricky for me to find any historical material or literature within Melbourne (even with the internet) and in many respects, as an outsider to the languages and cultures.
Despite this, I have found stories and artefacts that have made a huge impression on me and changed my interpretations of history, but these pieces are always in fragments with uncertain degrees of ‘truth’ at their core. So this has become an interesting position for me to work with as an artist. As I try and unearth these things, question them, and shift them, hopefully as a way of carving out space for alternative futures.
Read the extended interview online.
The Suburban Review #12: ITERATION is a special issue of work by writers and artists of colour from our recent NIDAnights exhibition. The issue contains three collaborative pairs of one poet and one visual artist:
• Lana Laham/Magan Magan
• Michelle Pereira/Adalya Nash Hussein
• MJ Flamiano/CB Mako
Each pair produced four works. Both poet and visual artist produced an original work, then swapped work with their partners, and ultimately produced an ‘ekphrastic’ response to their partner’s creation.
Iteration - Part 3/Chapter 3 was shortlisted for the 2019 QUT Digital Literature Award
Cover artwork by Kat Clarke.
Un Magazine 10.2, edited by Shelley McSpedden.
Spread from Homeschool: Writings of a Project Recto-Verso, a book about a series of art workshops and feeding programs held over the course of 18 months for street children all around Metro Manila. Contributions by Dr Minna Valjakka, Kaid Ashton, Lobregat Balaguer and Marc Chavez. Design by Lobregat Balaguer. Photo by Wawi Navarroza.
I remember walking past the vacant retail space on the corner of Lonsdale and Swanston Streets, quietly charting the course of its transformation. The shop came to be filled, sparingly, with trestle table desks, flat-pack cardboard boxes and rolls of packaging tape. The most salient clue that this store was ready to trade came with the application of the blue and white identity of the light-box sign — Chiang Jiang International Express. Existing somewhere between satellite post office and dingy warehouse backroom, the shopfront had become dedicated to sending domestic packages: bulk bargains, souvenirs and keepsakes overseas. Stopping at the pedestrian crossing, I looked back to see a couple standing at the window, gawking. They spoke to each other in the language of disapproval; their eyes darted around the store, fingers on the glass, exchanging physical nuances of criticism in an effort to be acknowledged for their disdain. And with all the unfairness for which we judge strangers, I felt certain of their situation — I knew they’d never lived away from their loved ones.
The Office of Culture and Design is a platform for social art practice and cultural research in the Philippines. Clara Lobregat Balaguer is the Director of The OCD; identifying as a writer, artist and self-taught researcher based in Manila. Kristian Henson is a Filipino-American graphic designer based in New York; he is Head of Design at The OCD and co-founder of The OCD’s publishing arm, Hardworking, Goodlooking. I first discovered The OCD online through documentation of their project, DIY Diskarte,1 a series of informal design workshops in collaboration with Ishinomaki Lab and Filipino carpenters. I was drawn in by Clara’s clever, honest and ambitious blogs — she recounted hours spent in unforgiving trapik (traffic), moments lost in translation and most poignantly, an intrinsic sense of worth for the value of a pinoy (Filipino) project, despite the numerous contradictions of facilitating social arts practice. Instantly, I felt close to this project. As a half-Filipina Australian, the role of race, culture and privilege often manifests in both obvious and ambivalent aspects of my arts practice. The sensibility of The OCD brings clarity to some of the clouds that prevent my ability to assimilate into my mum’s culture — our exchange helping to make sense of my role as an artist and strengthen my ties with our shared pinoy culture.
Read the extended interview online.