For its first edition, Archipelagic Futurisms presents and land erodes into, an exhibition developed for Calle Wright in Manila presenting works by Nice Buenaventura (b. 1984, Philippines) and Fyerool Darma (b. 1987, Singapore).From the circulation of industrial materials, poetic and sound forms to choreographies of dispersal through seriality and contingency to inflections of media and abstraction brought about by archipelagic connections, and land erodes into explores how these aesthetic tendencies proffer different ways of constituting knowledge and practice against the singularity and fixity of continental frames. The trope of erosion fleshes out an archipelagic disposition that is transformative and generative: weathering and wearing away, eroding existing knowledge and practice systems into fragments and sediment that in turn assemble or coalesce into other possibilities and variant iterations.

ARTISTS

Nice Buenaventura is a visual artist from Manila. Her methods revolve around the offloading of tensions, often between ethics and aesthetics, through drawing, painting, installation and citizen-ethnography. This extends to her project called Tropikalye, a mutual co-learning resource on vernacular culture in tropical and postcolonial Philippines. Using various strategies and modes of productivity allows her work to become generative expressions of concern, exploring new semantics adapted to change scenarios and future conditions.Nice holds postgraduate degrees in media and arts technology from Queen Mary, University of London and Ateneo de Manila University. She has presented work and participated in art-adjacent projects in Bacolod, Bangkok, London, Manila, Melbourne, Paris, Ruang, Singapore and Zurich. In 2021, she received the Cultural Center of the Philippines - Thirteen Artists Award and the Ateneo Art Awards - Fernando Zóbel Prize for Visual Art.

Fyerool Darma continues to live and work in Singapore. His object and material experimentations are based on an extensive visual vocabulary drawn from popular culture, literature, the archives, the Internet and his own life. His work has been presented in group exhibitions such as As the West Slept, Silver Art Projects; Transient Museum of a Thousand Conversation: LIR at ISCP (International Studio and Curatorial Program), both in New York, United States; Lost and found: Imagining new worlds, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (all in 2019) and An Atlas of Mirrors, Singapore Biennale (2016), and his long-term project After Ballads, NUS Museum, Singapore (2017-18). He was Artist-in Residence (2019 – 2020) at the NTU - Centre of Contemporary Arts where he presented Vivarium (wiifl∞w w/ l4if but t4k£ ø forms, ♥) at the Centre’s Vitrine.

CALLE WRIGHT

Fostering collaborations with artists, curators, researchers, and other cultural practitioners across the globe, Calle Wright’s new programming continues to create a space where things can develop at a slower, more drawn-out pace, insulated from commercial pressures, and aware of the value of experimentation. Artist Gary-Ross Pastrana takes the helm of Calle Wright as its new resident Program Curator. For its inaugural feature, Pastrana invited artist Issay Rodriguez who designed her tenure as an artist residency and series of public events. For its second program, Pastrana invited curator and critic Carlos Quijon, Jr., who will present the first edition of a traveling exhibition, research, and publication platform, Archipelagic Futurisms.

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