This is How You Cut Me Open was shown at the School of Image Arts as part of Third Year Show 2024: Flux, in association with Maximum Exposure 29: Beyond the Surface.
In Filipino folklore, there is a mythical vampiric creature known as a Manananggal (ᜋᜈᜈᜅ᜔ᜄᜎ᜔); a creature that can split itself in half at the waist, with the upper half being able to grow out batlike wings that allow for the Manananggal to fly in the night as she hunts her prey. In the daytime, the Manananggal takes on the form of a beautiful young woman, using her beauty to attract and lure her male victims before revealing her true form and devouring them. Today, the Manananggal is seen to be a symbol of the historical and colonial vilification of Indigenous women and queer people in leadership roles amongst their communities, reflecting the colonial violence they endured. The Manananggal exists in the gray area between desire and hatred, being seen as both an ugly monster and a beautiful woman. Her body continues to be physically and symbolically severed by the throes of colonial and misogynistic violence. Despite her beauty being shunned by the townsfolk who fear her, it is her beauty that keeps her alive.
The narrative of the Manananggal being a figure that exists in multiplicity through her bodily severance resonates with the contemplation of my body and its relationship to my identity, as well as the way others perceive both of them. The intersectionality of my identity as a queer Filipino has caused me to find myself existing in multiplicity as the ways different groups have invoked prejudice or bigotry against me. Whether it’s homophobia within the church I grew up in, or racism within LGBTQ+ spaces, being cast as undesired has permeated my life. On the same coin, being exoticized or fetishized for being Filipino or someone who expresses themself androgynously is also attached to the ways my body and my identity are perceived. Like the Manananggal, my body is both desired and undesired; sexualized and uglified under bigoted eyes. The commonality between these two perceptions is the fact that they both reduce my body to an object, separating it from the self.
These images are an interrogation of my objectification and the ways my body is severed by prejudiced and fetishizing gazes, defining my identity according to external perceptions. These images are also an interrogation of the nature of portraiture and eroticism, asking the question: if a photograph can objectify its subject, what does it mean when I turn the camera onto myself, being the subject and the one who controls the camera’s gaze? This question permeates these images. By being the only gaze present in the making of these images, I am repossessing my body, removing the external gaze, and producing a representation of myself that exists between my body and my gaze alone.