About Living on Loring February 8, 2008

An Exhibition By
Romina A. Diaz, Ann Wizer, and The WildCats
Galleria Duemila, Pasay City
March 8 – April 18, 2008

Two women. Two artists. One is established, while the other is just starting out. Both have lived in Pasay, and both are global nomads.Photographer Romina A. Diaz, who is half-Filipino and half-Italian, is able to step into the world of Loring Street as one of its main residents, while socially oriented artist Ann Wizer, a half-Norwegian/half-Lebanese American, participates in it from the periphery.

But their passion is one, the social consciousness is the same. Together, they journey to the end of Loring Street, where Romina lives with her family, where their gallery (Galleria Duemila) is located, and where a large community of informal settlers have been living across from them for decades.

The project focuses on the young girls (ages 9-16) who reside in this area. Society often ignores girls like them: girls living in squalor, denied decent shelter, basic education, and proper healthcare, forced to become full-time mothers to their younger siblings, trying to survive in the huddled mass of shanties they call home.

As a result of Diaz’ ten-week intensive photography workshop with them, we will have a chance to catch glimpses of their lives. The girls of Loring Street have also made ‘dollhouses’ out of LBC’s balikbayan boxes, which are representations of their lives, their homes, and their dreams.

Together with Romina, Ann has produced Who’s Sita?, a public art piece. By re-contextualizing the girl’s works and photos within the locus of the female archetype of Sita (the heroine in the classic Hindu epic poem The Ramayana), they aim to make statements about the falsity of mainstream advertising, compared to the hand-to-mouth existence of the women in Manila’s urban poor communities.

Furthermore, the public is invited to participate in the project through the Living on Loring Online Journal (http://livingonloring.wordpress.com). Here, the progress of the girls who are participating in Diaz’ Living on Loring workshop are being continually documented by the artists, as told to and observed by writer Ginny Mata. Other facilitators who participated in the workshop, writers Dang Bagas and Anabel Bosch, will also be writing their own entries here. The site will feature the stories and the photos and dollhouses of the girls, as well as discuss the processes involved in completing the project as a whole.

As the project evolves, the girls continue to learn how to see their lives objectively through the camera lens. In doing so, they gain greater confidence in themselves and in their abilities, and even begin to hope for a better future. And the public – those who are brave enough to look upon this work with honest, uncompromising eyes – are irrevocably affected by and changed by the experience.

This exhibit was born during a discussion for a larger project: TRADE ROUTES: CONVERGING CULTURES – SOUTHEAST ASIA AND ASIA AMERICA. This is a multi-year series of four projects involving inter-regional, inter-country, and international cross cultural collaborations and exchanges between women. “Living on Loring/Who’s Sita?” is the kick-off venue of its pilot project entitled Woman As (Mythical) Hero, which was inspired by the classic Hindu epic poem, the Ramayana.

Working under the guidance of TRADE ROUTES project director Angel Velasco Shaw, this project is supported by the Arts Network Asia, Asian Cultural Council, and New York University. It is also made possible through the generous support of Galleria Duemila, Chromograph, Inc., Digi-Ads, Inc., Kameraworld, Luneta Advertising, Inc., LBC (Hari Ng Padala), and Signmedia.

To coincide with International Women’s Month, the Living on Loring Exhibit opens at Galleria Duemila on March 8, 2008, and will run until April 14, 2008.For more information, please contact Mimi Sanson of Galleria Duemila at +632-833-9815/831-9990 and duemila@mydestiny.com, or email us directly at livingonloring@gmail.com.