Selected Projects
TOWARDS AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF EXTRACTION (M.A. THESIS) - 2019-2023
An aerial view of a mine in Naga City, Cebu in the Philippines. Residents sued the mining companies and state actors following a deadly landslide that killed over 70 and is believed to have affected over 8,000 people in 2018 (2019). In my thesis, I theorize an epistemology of extraction consisting of three dimensions; the erasure of lived experiences, legal categories as fixed boundaries of knowledge, and manipulating courts.
Ethnographic work, interviews and conversations with mining-affected residents, combined with legal documents obtained from this civil case in Naga City demonstrate this epistemological framing of mining violence. Moving away from mining quarries as sites of violence, I used an epistemological lens to frame the rule of law as a site of mining violence.
CLAIMING / MAKING - 2020-2022
OUR ISLANDS - 2015-2016
What does life look like on different islands? That's the simple and perhaps naive question that started my research about islands as geographic and social spaces. As a new migrant to Australia, I was skeptical of the narrative shaped by western academics, tourism, policymakers, and generally a “white” Australia(n system and culture), with a skewed view on island and Indigenous cultures.
“Our island life has changed,” says Crystal Love, a transgender Tiwi Woman and activist from the Tiwi Islands. Spanning Australia and Aotearoa, this work looks at islands as social and physical places. Coming from Bantayan Island in the Philippines, I wanted to focus on shared experiences of island life.
DO YOU KNOW THIS FEELING?
A culminating exhibition for "Our Islands 2015-2016" at 'Do you Know this Feeling?' exhibited at Firstdraft, Sydney (Australia).
FAUNA / FLORA - 2020-PRESENT
The project challenges the role of science in the classification of flora and fauna, favoring what are considered credible epistemologies. Ultimately, my interest lies in examining entrenched colonial systems.
HARVEST - 2016-2017