Liryc Dela Cruz | Il mio filippino

Il mio filippino is a multimedia performance based on a research project that has engaged the artist for several years. Drawing from an astonishing documentation of the routines of care and gestures of cleaning by Filipino workers. It aims to be an invitation to rethink and reflect on the question: how can we be equal and yet recognise the invisibility of other groups, such as domestic workers?

Direction, concept, research and choreography:
Liryc Dela Cruz

Performers:
Benjamin Vasquez Barcellano Jr, Sheryl Palbacal Aluan and Jenny Guno Llanto

In collaboration with:
Benjamin Vasquez Barcellano Jr, Flora Ventura, Sheryl Palbacal Aluan, Jenny Guno Llanto, Tess Magallanes, Daisy Magallanes, Jessica Duque

duration: 45'

Liryc Dela Cruz

Liryc Dela Cruz is an artist and filmmaker from Tupi, South Cotabato in Mindanao, Philippines based in Rome, Italy. His work has been performed and shown at nume- rous international film festivals and contemporary art venues, including: Locarno Film Festival, Matadero (Madrid), La Neomudéjar (Madrid), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), UK New Artist, Artissima (Turin), Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Roma (MACRO), Teatro di Roma, La Biennale di Venezia and Ocean Space (Venice).

At a young age, Dela Cruz received the Bamboo Camera Award from the Father of independent cinema in the Philippines, Kidlat Tahimik. Dela Cruz has col- laborated with and been mentored by the independent cinema’s master filmmaker Lav Diaz, alongside figures such as Hadji Balajadia, Françoise Vergès, Simon Njami, Gutierrez Mangansakan, Chantal Akerman, and Anna Daneri. In 2018, Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival identified Dela Cruz as one of the budding leaders of the “Slow Cinema” movement. In 2020, he was selected as one of the young emerging filmmakers of Berlinale Talents during the 70 Berlin International Film Festival.

Liryc Dela Cruz’s films are thematically related to his origins, history, biography and interiority, while his performances and research are focused on care, hospitality, indigenous practices, decolonial practices, post-colonial Philippines, and the transpacific trade of enslaved people. In 2021, Dela Cruz debuted his ongoing research project Il Mio Filippino as a performance at Teatro India - Teatro Nazionale in Rome, in collaboration with Filipino domestic and care workers. In 2020 the project received the Artissima - Torino Social Impact Art Award. Dela Cruz also participated in Mattatoio di Roma’s Prender-si cura residency programme in 2022.

Dela Cruz was selected as fellow at the TBA21 (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Con- temporary) Ocean Fellowship, where he initiated a project based on indigenous care and hospitality in the Philippines, drawing from the diary of Antonio Pigafetta titled Ocean as a Space of Perpetual Care. In 2023 he was selected as one of the artists in residence by the Academy in Exile at Freie Universität - Berlin, and as a participating artist of Santarcangelo Festival for the IN EX(ILE) LAB 2023-2024. Dela Cruz is also a mentor at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy, where he presented his research & Hospitality: Tools for the Revolution. Dela Cruz has performed at the 59th Venice Biennale under the Sami Pavilion and aabaakwaad. In 2023, he premiered his new research performance Kay Kami Mga Mananap (Because We Are Beasts) in Udine Far East Film Festival, a reimagination of the artist on the concepts of intimacy and eroticism in pre-colonial Philippines.