When the typhoon blows off its cocoon, the butterfly embraces the sun

Meet the Artists

• Saluhan Collective

  

  Established in 2019, Saluhan Collective was created to establish a network between creatives in Australia and the Philippines and has since expanded to include collaborative projects in arts and community development. 

  Saluhan is currently taking part in RESIDENCE, a studio initiative at Footscray Community Arts in 2022-2023. When the typhoon blows off its cocoon, the butterfly embraces the sun has been developed during the Collective’s time in-residence and has been led by artists MJ Flamiano, James Emmanuel McKinnon, and Catherine Ortega-Sandow. 

  IG: @ s_a_l_u_h_a_n

• Cinema Bahala Na (RJ Dela Rosa)

  

  Cinema Bahala Na is a free film community program run by RJ Dela Rosa, showcasing his own films alongside facilitating equipment and resource hire, film knowledge sharing and helping new filmmakers navigate the capital-dependent medium by focusing on community-collaborative productions.  

  IG: @cinemabahalana @mouthfulwasted

• Ranima Montes

  

  Ranima Montes is a queer Filipinx filmmaker based in Narrm (Melbourne). They seek to bring a unique narrative voice to each project through striking visual storytelling. 

  Her narrative work primarily explores stories concerning the Filipinx diaspora experience. ‘Mestiza’, her debut short film, premiered at the 2018 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). 

  Ranima is a part of the film collective, slo. They are a recipient of the Ignite tier ($25,000), 2022 Diasporas Commission from Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV). Made with slo, her most recent work, ‘The fish that ties its body in knots’ delves into memory, grief and dreams between three sisters. 

  This year, Ranima received over $50,000 to develop her first feature through Creative Victoria’s Creators Fund. She is currently in the Philippines researching.

  IG: @ranima.montes

• Kenneth Suico

  

  Kenneth Suico is an artist residing and working in naarm/Melbourne. Born in Cebu, Philippines, Suico jumps across a broad range of mediums, applying the modes of photography, video, pop song performance, and installation into their practice. 

  The act of repurposing and the appropriation of what is considered western-based mythology narratives and imagery, and skewing it into their personal history and cultural superstitions, are common motifs in their works.

  IG: @kenneth_suico

• Cris Miralles

  

  Cris Miralles is an artist and naturalist, born in Australia, with Waray-Waray roots. Raised in lutruwita/Tasmania, but now based in Naarm/Melbourne: Cris uses the home they have found amongst the natural world as a means of ingress to re-connecting with precolonial and on-going land-based ancestral knowledge of the archipelago.  A re-connection: decolonially and in struggle; to, with, and for kin – kapwa.

  IG: @katutubong.bituin

   

• Beatrice Rubio-Gabriel

  

  Bea Rubio-Gabriel is a performance artist, writer, and curator born in the Philippines, now based in Naarm/Melbourne. Exploring systems of care and Resistance Aesthetics, they challenge current curatorial and euro-centric modes of exhibiting, approaching the curatorial as its own way of making; grounding it in community, and rhizomatic ways of care and collectivisation. Their research focuses on pre-colonial writing systems (namely, Baybayin) and (Ifugao) ways of healing of the Philippines. Approaching writing as artform, they explore the Baybayin script in how it can be activated as a gateway to rebuild cultural connections through performance.

  IG: @beatricefrgabriel

• Kenny Waite

  

  Kenny Waite is an emerging artist and writer, with family roots in Davao. Born on Gunaikurnai land/Gippsland, they are now living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. They use painting, song and word to explore our many identities and how our heritage, grief and queerness overlap with the common theme of re-connection to self, culture and community. A process of how personal creation and representation can be used to reconnect and heal lost connections.

  IG: @kennymakesart

• Mimo Mukii (Q&A Facilitator)

  

  Mimo Mukii (they/them) is a Batangueñx/Kikuyu producer based in Naarm that works in film, art and events. Mimo is interested in work that explores the experiences of inhabiting spaces between identities and cultures. 

  Mimo produced the award-winning short film ‘Blackwood’ which screened at festivals in 2019 and 2020 in the US, UK, Nigeria, Germany and Australia, ‘The Moon and Me’ which premiered at the 2021 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles and exhibited at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and ‘TUĪ NÁ’ 《推拿》which premiered at the 2022 Melbourne International Film Festival.

  Mimo is a member of the Slo Collective, a film collective that had its first exhibition ‘what ties us apart’ at Blindside Gallery in 2022, funded by Multicultural Arts Victoria as part of the Diasporas Festival. They have produced film events with Emerging Writers Festival, Girls on Film Festival and AfrOURban, and sometimes they make mixed media art. Mimo currently works as a freelancer in the film and television industry.

  IG: @mimomukii