Offerings for Escalante
October 21, 2023–February 8, 2024
Para Site is delighted to present Offerings for Escalante, the first major institutional solo exhibition of the artist duo Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien in Asia, curated by Celia Ho. The exhibition features all-new commissions including an hour-long experimental documentary film, large-scale drawings on handmade paper, a site-specific installation, and a 16mm stop motion animated film.
The documentary film, a co-commission by Para Site, CCA Berlin—Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow International, and MoMA PS1, is the result of extensive primary research conducted by the artists on the issues of food sovereignty and land justice in Negros Island, Philippines, a region which has been historically dominated by the sugar industry. The artists have been researching the Escalante Massacre of 1985, an incident that took place during the regime of Ferdinand Marcos (1972–1986). Although this tragic event took place several decades ago, it is nonetheless emblematic of the injustices that marginalised groups, such as sugar plantation workers, have faced since colonial times in the Philippines. In the film, the artists harness the transformative power of collective mourning to envision future pathways to equality for those deprived of agency over their land and food.
In the suite of mixed media drawings on handmade paper, as well as the 16mm animation, symbols of seeming destruction, such as fire and holes on a leaf, take on undertones of hope and rebirth through the artists’ manipulation of eclectic materials gathered from the flora of Negros and echoing experimental techniques used in the documentary film. A rotating light installation made from onion skin, on the other hand, seeks to reconnect the ‘white cube’ with the land upon which it’s built, and entices viewers with shifting refractions cast over the exhibition space.
The display structure of the exhibition consists of bamboo scaffolding, a common construction method seen throughout Hong Kong. The exhibition makes use of bamboo as a spatial design element specifically to resonate the discussion on the Philippines’ economics and politics with Hong Kong. Many of the local Filipino diaspora, which numbers over 200,000, migrated from their home due to ongoing impacts of political repression and extractivism explored by the artists in the exhibition.
The exhibition will be accompanied by public programmes including lectures, discussion sessions, and paper-making workshops, which will explore connections between the Philippines, Hong Kong, and beyond. This multivalent presentation intends to test the parameters of cultural institutions and their capacity to provide care and material support for radical community-building, both by platforming an existing social movement in the Philippines and by fostering alternative gathering contexts that could offer fertile grounds for transcultural solidarity.
The premiere presentation at Para Site emerges from a cross-institution collaboration with CCA Berlin—Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow International, and MoMA PS1.
About the artists
Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien are artists and writers from the Philippines and the US, respectively. Together, they have an artistic practice that moves from the Philippines outward to other places, addressing localised iterations of labour and capital from the perspective of imperial damage. They have had solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Freiburg (2018); and Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2018). Their work has been included in recent group exhibitions at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2022); the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2021); the 5th New Museum Triennial, New York (2021); the 39th EVA International, Limerick (2021); Manifesta 13, Marseille (2020); the Drawing Center, New York (2020); the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei (2019); the Brunei Gallery, SOAS University of London (2019); the NTU Center for Contemporary Art, Singapore (2018); UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2017); Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok (2017); and Green Papaya Art Projects, Manila (2009). From 2021 to 2023, Camacho and Lien were fellows at the Graduate School of the Universität der Kunste, Berlin.
