Joshua Serafin

The multidisciplinary artist Joshua Serafin from the Philippines is one of our resident artists. In their artistic exploration, Joshua Serafin wrestles with the fractures & wounds imprinted by empire  on the body, soul, and community. For the work 'PEARLS', the multi-media artist draws inspiration from nonnormative genders celebrated in the precolonial Philippines.

Together with fellow artists  Lukresia Quismundo, and Bunny Cadag, Serafin abandons the binary they have inherited from colonial  culture and returns to the ancient past in search of the spiritual roots of Filipino society. With a gaze toward & away from imperial history, the three performers advance gender-diverse existence as an  alternative blueprint for the future. 'PEARLS' thus becomes an exercise of healing that offers an  opportunity for queer & trans people of color to transfigure dark and traumatic histories into  something beautiful, similar to pearls formed from foreign particles which irritate the oyster’s mantle. 'PEARLS' is last part of the trilogy 'Cosmological Gangbang'.