The Artist as Caring Provocateur
For the past years, my work has been exploring cultural identity and my identity towards a decolonized body. I have come up with the idea of care, togetherness, and friendship as an impetus to create new works. My works explore exchanges in a form of communal understanding through giving; what you can give and what you cannot give. Understanding that the gesture/action/idea of “giving” is in three modes: artistic, personal, and cultural. Being aware of these things and seeing it as part of the creative framework in collaboration digs deep into the participants of the giving ritual both the artist and the audience to unearth their strengths, allyship on shared struggles, and togetherness.
Artist is Performing Institution
The personal as political and the contemporary media posts as future archives of historical artifacts are one of the key aspects in my explorations. So from my inner desire to create a platform to navigating and making artistic visibility in social media. Coming from a Municipality in the Philippines that lacks arts institutions, for the past years it has been so hard for us local artists to survive. With little to no support from the government, artists from my community are creating ways to survive and continue to make platforms for performances. Having this personal rant which reflects a political situation in my municipality on a complex level, I am creating, exploring and researching a performance called “Performing Institution”. How can an artist perform/embody as an artistic and cultural institution? Standing up to change my community’s lack of communal art and changing that to making my neighborhood a platform for performances.
My first exploration was “JHE Project also known as THE PROJECT a mentorship program for contemporary performance on communal care and togetherness. The Project or Jhe Project is a short term for “James Harvey Estrada Project on Performance Experiments” an artist-led art laboratory that explores on enriching the participating artists’ interest in their respective local community and the community’s issues and complex sustainable system in the framework of “care” and “togetherness” practice. Understanding that community is not limited to people in specific geographical location but also to a group of people that share interests, struggles and advocacies. So, I personally perform as the institution giving platforms, because of the lack of spaces/programs for these areas in my community. I organized everything from social media posts, to email posts with the help of artist friends and the community.
We hope Jhe project sill continue, we need your support!