Vien Valencia

Ateneo Art Awards 2023 Residency Grant
16 October — 30 November 2024

Vien Valencia  (b. 1998) studied at the University of the Philippines Diliman College of Fine Arts. Valencia began as a painter, but has expanded his practice to video, photography, and installation. His work is located at the intersection between community, time, site, process, and anthropology. In 2023, Valencia won the Ateneo Art Award for your age, my age, and the age of the river, a collaboration with the Dumagat-Remontado indigenous group who have depended for generations on the Tinipak River in Tanay, Rizal and Quezon Province, Philippines, facing a grave threat to their way of life due to a dam construction project that will submerge their rivers, villages, and livelihood. Singapore Art Museum commissioned Valencia’s imprint of an imprint of an imprint, an extension of the artist’s developing research in Tinipak River and its surrounding communities. 

Drawing from his personal encounters and the collective struggles of society, Valencia’s approach is experimental and collaborative, making use of materials found in local sites. He also often works with locals through workshops and curatorial projects.

Valencia developed a keen focus on the exploration and documentation of marginalized and ignored populations. He currently works on various alternative archive projects, a series of iterative projects all tied together by an interest in challenging traditional methods of archiving.

field drawings

03.12.2024 
Hacienda Matab-ang, Panlililo Barangay Matab-ang
Talisay, Negros Occidental

A site is composed of different realities shaped by people, and as a whole, it reflects various histories. In this piece, I ask the recurring question of how we shape the space we inhabit and how it, in turn, shapes us. In "field drawings," I contribute to this evolving site, which, in its entirety, becomes part of multiple histories of the place and its people. The land is not a static matrix, people and other agents are passing through it, it transforms and moves through the realities and lives that unfold within it.