Cian Dayrit

Cian Dayrit (born in 1989 in Manila, based in Rizal, Philippines) is an artist working in painting, sculpture and installation. In 2017-18, he participated in the Triennial of the New Museum “Songs for Sabotage” in New York and the Art Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

He is a member of SAKA, the Artists’ Alliance for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, in the Philippines.

Cian Dayrit’s practice is based on extensive research into post-colonial legacies, counter-cartography, historical narratives and ancient mythologies. He creates an elaborate tableau and visual imagination closely linked to a critical examination of the seduction

of nativism and nationalism through bourgeois dress intrinsically rooted in the moral universe of Filipinos.

The work takes the form of a critical musicological counter-impulse aimed at dismantling the colonial gaze and the assumed body parts of the empire.

Damnasyon is composed by one of twelve photographs from the archives of Dean Worchester’s 1901 trip to the Philippines documenting an imperialist vision of indigeneity. It extracts symbolic violence from the inherent representation of the photographs as an archival gravedigger and summons new meanings by imbuing it with woven textiles, talisman appliqués and embroidered political writings, upsetting a genesis where past and present are completely cut off by political necessity.