2022 Recap: Osmosis Exhibition

During November, I was part of OSMOSIS, an exhibition which highlighted the art of guards in New York City’s most acclaimed museums. The show ran from November 11-13 in Art Cake and was presented by Gentle Cowboys and organized and curated by Gabriel Sehringer. Highlighting the rich artistic lives of cultural workers within museums is a valuable resource in creating personal connections to communities which institutions serve.

PUSH / PULL PERFORMANCE AT AROS PUBLIC ATELIER

On September 8, Flux Factory at ARoS Public Atelier in Denmark featured PUSH / PULL, which is a collaborative project/performance dialogue between me and artists Abdul Dube, Makoto Chill Okubo, and Wren Noble. PUSH / PULL is a multimedia performance that examines the interplay between constraint and attachment, tension and dependency through different acts of tethering and marking. Through the lens of queerness and charting astronomic movements, the piece explores personal histories and interrelations between bodies. The performance was followed by a film screening of Makoto Chill Okubo’s Moippen Mama!

Art of the Guardians Panel Discussion at the Smithsonian

It was an honor to be a part of the “Art of the Guardians” panel discussion at the Smithsonian on Tuesday, October 18, as part of the National Conference on Cultural Property Protection. The session explored how creativity and a love for the art that guards protect enabled museum security personnel to respond to, endure, and recover from the most acute challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic. Panelists from The Metropolitan Museum included my colleagues Lambert Fernando @lambfern, Jevijoe Vitug @jevijoe, Emilie Lemakis @emiliebunnyl, and Louisa Lam.

During the discussion I mentioned that what I've learned to value during this difficult time is the complex humanity of my colleagues who deserve respect and admiration beyond being a body in a uniform. We've learned to look out for each other more and care at a deeper level. We have learned that each of us have rich lives and artistic visions that is in itself an untapped living cultural asset within museums. Through their lived experience, museum workers’ provide a valuable educational source that would further inspire and connect visitors to the art within cultural institutions. 

Featured in The Met Museum's Perspectives

An edited transcript of Abang-guard’s performative talk on Asian American Modernism accompanied by recordings of Louisa Lam’s poems is featured in The Met Museum’s Perspectives.

Video Projects in The Met Museum’s Art Work Exhibition

I’m excited to be part of The Met Museum’s Art Work: Artists Working at The Met exhibit highlighting museum workers with two collaborative video projects including artists Jevijoe Vitug and IV Castellanos. The show is part of a long-standing tradition of art worker creatives sharing their work within The Met community since 1935 and will be open for viewing to the public for the first time. The exhibition runs from June 6-19, 2021

Artists on Artworks at The Met : Abang-guard

Thrilled that Jevijoe Vitug and I as Abang-guard will be doing a performative lecture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We will be discussing works by four Asian American artists in the museum’s collection specifically Bumpei Usui, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Isamu Noguchi, and Martin Wong as well as creating a cross-dialogue through movement to poems by writer Louisa Lam.

After Image - Sensing Brownness

Amber Jamilla Musser writes about my Dark Matter photography series for her essay Sensing Brownness: On Racialization, Perception, and Method. She states that “visibility comes down to a question of valuation. In this way, Catbagan reminds us that our experience of art, museums, and even knowledge production more broadly is framed by work, people, and spaces that are often marginalized.” Her article is featured in the March 2022 issue of After Image.

Object II Body Studies on view at La Mama Galleria

Object II Body Studies is currently on view in La Mama Galleria’s Window Videos Program from 02.20-03.06.22 curated by C. Finley.

Object II Body Studies is a collaborative performance and video project with artist IV Castellanos that utilizes industrial objects found in various art institutions, restructuring their use to investigate the multiple dynamics between labor and tension. The movements focus on intimate object to body transfers.

The Family Show at La Mama Galleria

Catch my piece at the final days of The Family Show at La Mama Galleria at 47 Great Jones Street, NYC. The show, which runs from December 17, 2021 - January 7, 2022, is a long standing tradition to celebrate community.

Founded in 1984, La Galleria is a nonprofit gallery committed to nurturing experimentation in the visual arts. La Galleria encourages an active dialogue between new media, performance, the plastic and visual arts, curatorial projects, and educational initiatives. It serves the East Village community by offering diverse programming to an inter-generational audience, and expanding the parameters of a traditional gallery space. As a non-profit, La Galleria is able to provide artists and curators with unique exhibition opportunities that are largely out of reach in a commercial gallery setting.

Performance is Alive x Satellite Art Show - Art Basel and Miami Arts Week

Object II Body Studies, my performance and video collaborative project with artist IV Castellanos, screened at Performance is Alive x Satellite Art Show, Miami’s only Performance-Based Art Fair during Miami Art from 11/30-12/4.

Curatorial Statement: “In the wake of the pandemic, this program represents the re-emergence and reclamation of the body. The selected artists recognize the revolutionary power of the body through actions that often serve as a release from the trauma inflicted through centuries of heteronormative and colonial conditioning. In addition, this year’s program seeks work that actively rejects the systems perpetuating injustice and serves as a safe space for historically marginalized communities. This is the liberation of the body.” -Quinn Dukes

Grounding and Automatic Drawing at Governors Island

Halloween Sunday was a magical day to connect and draw with the earth.

Thank you to everyone who was part of Sympoietica, specially @sholehasgary for linking us with sonic atmosphere and @e.connolly123 for the videos and pics, @governorsisland, @flux_factory, #CityArtistCorps, @nyfacurrent, @NYCulture, @madein_ny, and @queenstheatre.

Sympoietica Performance

Join me for a grounding meditation and automatic drawing event on Saturday, October 31, from 2-3pm @governorsisland with soundscape by the amazing @sholehasgary.

Sympoietica is a participatory performance that creates a space of solace, recuperation, and creative expression through our relationship to the earth and its multi-species inhabitants. The audience is invited to participate in a guided soundscape, movement, and reflection exercise that connects them to Governors Island’s biodiversity and history while expressing their associations through automatic drawing. The performance combines the connective practice of earthing, the Surrealist technique of automatic drawing, and feminist theorist Donna Haraway’s concept of sympoiesis or "making-with.” Through sound, movement, and reflection, the performance generates a collaboration between bodies, place, and other living things that center systems of care, embodied knowledge, and collective well-being. Sympoietica is made possible by the New York Foundation for the Arts’ #CityArtistCorps Grants. Special thanks to @flux_factory, @nyfacurrent, @NYCulture, @madein_ny, and @queenstheatre.

America is in the Heart Performance for Enduring Apocalypse

On October 16, my collab project Abang-guard Duo performed “America is in the Heart” based on Carlos Bulosan’s novel for the “Enduring Apocalypse” performance marathon curated by Jenna Hamed at the Abron’s Art Center Amphitheater. Artists responded, contended with, expanded on all of the ways apocalypse befalls us, and ways to endure the ongoing man-made disasters happening to us and around us. Special thanks to @j7md and @abronsartscenter. Photo by @e.connolly123.

Object II Body Studies - Works in Progress

Object II Body Studies is a collaborative performance project with artist IV Castellanos that utilizes industrial objects found in various art institutions, restructuring their use to investigate the multiple dynamics between labor and tension. The movements focus on intimate object to body transfers. The project is a series of works in progress for the Flux Factory Residency in ARoS Museum in Aarhus, Denmark and Art Quarter Budapest in Hungary, Budapest.

Artist Talk with Sholeh Asgary at Real Time & Space

I’m excited to have a conversation with artist, Sholeh Asgary as we relate our work to the multiple conceptual and cultural aspects of shadows, fog, and immaterial art. Real Time & Space will be hosting the event via Zoom on Wednesday, July 28 5-7 pm PDT / 8-10 pm EDT.

Every Woman Biennial x Superchief Gallery NFT

The 2021 Every Woman Biennial is presenting MY LOVE IS YOUR LOVE, its 1st NFT Biennial, taking on and diversifying the NFT world. Their aim is to give women and non-binary artists a platform to experiment with new technology and mint NFTs. The exhibition is presented at Superchief Gallery NFT’s online platform as well as its physical space from June 24-July 3 in New York. Click on the above image to view my first NFT work.

Brooklyn Rail - Art Books Review

Amber Jamilla Musser reviews all three shows at the Center for Book Arts Spring 2021 exhibition including my show Lights, Tunnels, Passages, and Shadows. She connects them as manifesting “theorist Donna Haraway’s concept of sympoiesis and use the forms of the book to enlarge what constitutes knowledge and being together.” The review is featured in the June issue of the Brooklyn Rail.

Shifting Sights/Sites - A Participatory Performance Event

The audience will be invited to participate in a guided sound, movement and reflection exercise by Abang-guard duo Maureen Catbagan and Jevijoe Vitug along with sound artist Sholeh Asgary. The performance will be followed by a lecture focusing on systems of care that re-envision the body as a dynamic, multi-layered site of interconnected trajectories and possibilities. The body becomes an entry point that touches upon themes of hidden histories, embodied knowledge, symbiotic relations, and modes of recuperation.

Note: Center for Book Arts will hold this event entirely online. A Zoom link will be sent in an email to all registrants.

Lights, Tunnels, Passages & Shadows - Center for Book Arts

Lights, Tunnels, Passages, and Shadows exhibition examines the transcendent possibilities of peripheral spaces within museums. A utilitarian passage transforms into an ethereal opening. A mundane corner vibrates with a change of light. An invisible worker’s movement conveys visual poetry. Stairwells become illuminated, meaningful, and spiritual. Shifting the visual paradigm of these spaces, objects, and people changes their meaning and the viewers’ relation to them.

The photographic series is featured in a boxed folio containing three fold-outs that enable the images to be arranged into multiple compositions creating abstract narratives that connect the peripheral to the sublime while focusing on the museum worker as mediator. These re-configured fold-outs act as architectural interventions illustrating that while the marginal is designated towards boundaries, it can also be the edge towards boundlessness.

A Spirit of Disruption

My collab video Abang-guard Work Habits: ARoS with artist Jevijoe Vitug is part of media in the round section of A Spirit of Disruption exhibition commemorating SFAI’s 150th anniversary. Curated by Margaret Tedesco and Leila Weefur the show focuses on “celebrating the history of the institution and prioritizing untold stories from those who haven’t historically been included or made visible.” The exhibtion will be on view from March 19-July 3 and was currently featured in Hyperallergic.