Working in painting, sculpture and installation, Cian Dayrit’s practice explores colonialism and ethnography, history and archaeology. Born to a middle-class family in Manila, Dayrit’s works, as well as his socially-engaged and community-based projects, address struggles and oppression that are normalised as a systematic imbalance within a society that holds a colonial past. His mixed-media, cartographic, or counter-cartographic works, made with textile, embroidery and collage, propose a challenge to a monopolised framing of history and a spatial understanding of the world. His counter-maps depict a world map viewed from upside-down; a trajectory of displacement of the Ayta community; marginalisation of the peasant community of the Philippines, among others. By addressing the deeply imperialist and feudalist legacy of displacement and exploitation, Dayrit proposes an alternative mode of narrative construction, empowered through resistance and protest. Dayrit’s practice is a call for social quality and powerful visualisation of the struggle for land, history, culture and identity. 

Gwangju Biennial

Gwangju

Dhaka Art Summit

Dhaka

Dak’Art

Dakar

Berlin Biennial

Berlin

Manila

Galeria Plan B

Düsseldorf

Kai 10 | Arthena Foundation

Jakarta

Museum Macan

Los Angeles

Hammer Museum

New York City

New Museum of Contemporary Art

Gasworks

Cian Dayrit

London

Yuta Nagi Panaad (Promised Land)

Tiis Ganda, Kutis Amerika

Mapa ng Kapangyarihan at Gahom (Map of Power and Hegemony)

Landlessness In the Islands

Feudal Fields