Location: Venues across Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
Dates: February 7-22, 2020
Curators: Allison Collins, Patrick Cruz, Su-Ying Lee
Artists: Lesley-Anne Cao (PH), Fabiola Carranza (CA/CR/USA), Marcos Castro (MX), Raven Chacon (USA), Gabi Dao (CA), Elisa Ferrari (CA/IT), Fastwurms (CA), Carolina Fusilier (AR/MX), Cristóbal Gracia (MX), Maharlika (Catalina Africa, Zeus Bascon, Tanya Villanueva) (PH), Miko Revereza (PH), Issay Rodriguez (PH), Scott Rogers (CA/UK), Sarah Rose (NZ/UK), Carolina Magis Weinberg (MX), Prras! collective (Nelly César & Tamara Ibarra) with Colectivo Amasijo (Martina Manterola Serra & Cecilia Castro) (MX), Jacobo Zambrano (VE) Contributors: Rosemarie Roque (PH), Grrrl Gang Manila, Stride Gallery/MST, Calgary, Artist-in-Residence: Stephanie Comilang (CA/DE)
Website: www.kamiasspecialprojects.com
Contact: kamiasspecialprojects@gmail.com
Schedule of events: pdf

From February 7-22, 2020, the 3rd iteration of the Kamias Triennial (KT3) titled “Sawsawan: Conversations in the Dirty Kitchen” will gather a group of international artists to participate in exhibitions, performances, screenings, discussions and more. All events are free and open to the public. A schedule of events will be announced in January 2020.

Although the word ‘triennial’ simply means an occurrence of once every three years, it has become synonymous with institutionalized, powerful art-world events. Against such expectations, Kamias takes place in a “developing” country favouring a domestic scale, artist-run culture, accessible events and participants selected for their potential to gather together to generate new possibilities. The project is situated to consider the notion of globalization as a now-established norm, yet one where uneven national relationships often gives authority to topics defined in the West. Since the Kamias Triennial was founded by Canadian-Filipino artist Patrick Cruz in 2014, the event has continued to take place in the dedicated Kamias Special Projects space (KSP), adjacent to the Cruz family home, and across partner venues in Quezon City, Metro Manila. The domestic-cum-public location of the KSP space has remained the heart of the Kamias Triennial signifying deep roots and attentiveness to human scale and scope.

The title of KT3, “Sawsawan: Conversations in the Dirty Kitchen” refers to sawsawan (dipping sauce) that Filipino cultural writer Doreen G. Fernandez considered representative of a cultural ethos of sharing labour, authorship and power. “Dirty kitchen” is the name for the outdoor kitchen where the foundational, but sometimes messy task of cooking is done. It is an extension of the home where nourishment takes place and friends and family gather. The title is a metaphoric underscoring of practices that resist colonialism and a stated expression of our

foundational value, the domestic as a figurative and literal space. It foregrounds our intention to gather where we can engage in messy, complex and nourishing conversations generated by the many voices of our artists and audiences. We arrive at the ancestral kitchen, the KSP project space to consider the 3rd Triennial’s movements of reverse migration across the Global South—Mexico to the Philippines and across the north-south divide from Canadian and Eurpoean contexts to a shared space to engage related concerns of context.

The Kamias Triennial positions the domestic scale, both architecturally and as an ethos, as a space for contributing to contemporary cultural production where being, thinking and making together carry the same weight as exhibiting and viewing. The Triennial is produced by the Kamias Special Projects Collective--our acronym KSP references a Tagalog language abbreviation, which translates as “kulang sa pansin” meaning lack of attention. This deliberate citation refers to the nuanced, but urgent and pressing need to spend time with the overlooked problems and challenges that we face as cultural producers and consumers. As implied by the state of “lacking attention”, rather than turning our attention towards replicating the mainstream art-world we are attentive to creative and intellectual work realized through lateral dialogues across cultures, open-ended community practices, and experimental curatorial strategies on an intimate scale.

Thank you to our Kamias Triennial partner venues: Green Papaya, Load Na Dito, Los Otros, Project 20, University of the Philippines Film Institute, Mountain Standard Time Performative Art Festival.

The Kamias Triennial wishes to acknowledge support from:
Canada Council for the Arts
Embassy of Canada in the Philippines

Read: 3rd Kamias Triennial: In Conversation with the Curators/Organizers, Public Parking, Victor Konadu

Click on thumbnails below to move to next image