MEMORY MODULE: KEREL

”Kerel” takes its inspiration from the German avant-garde filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Querelle, which is a film adaptation of Jean Genet’s novel Querelle de Brest.  Cuyson’s “Kerel” puts at its center the narrative of the sea and weaves the tale of a queer Filipino sailor at work on a ship. Using found footage, film, drawing, painting, sculpture and set design, Jon Cuyson transforms the gallery space into the interior and exterior of a container ship simultaneously blurring the lines of art and design. The resulting installation shuttles between desire and conflict with dream and reality to anchor the fluctuating waves of the undefined narrative while pinpointing what is at stake in the dismantling of the self. The exhibit reflects on notions of identity, authorship, desire, and memory. For Cuyson, art making is an inclusionary space that can both question and acknowledge the historical and logical conditions of its existence in the context of the present. Thus, his works emphasize a concern for a site in flux, vulnerable and malleable where change is not only possible but also continuously taking place.

2013 /  1335 Mabini / Philippines