Queering Pilipinx Aesthetics

A MULTIDISCIPLINARY PROJECT FEATURING FILM SCREENINGS, LIVE PERFORMANCE, PANEL DISCUSSIONS, VISUAL ARTS EXHIBITION, AND ARTIST DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS.

August 9-11, 2024
Bindlestiff Studio
185 6th Street, SF

*Man@ng is Deity (2021) featuring dance artists Johnny Huy Nguyễn and Kao Sebastian Saephanh, photo by Erina C. Alejo.*

KULARTS presents Queering Pilipinx Aesthetics, a community building-centered project that will foster creative exchange and move toward a shared field of artistic discourse, while empowering Queer and trans Pilipinx artists and cultural practitioners working in the diaspora.

This program is supported with funding from California Arts Council Impact Projects and digital exhibition co-sponsored by the ARROZidency Filipino American artist-in-residence program.

EVENT SCHEDULE

FRIDAY, AUGUST 9

5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Opening Reception of Queering Pilipinx Aesthetics Visual Exhibition

7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Film Screening featuring short films by Mac Andre Arboleda, Dominique Castelano, Maureen Catbagan, Ray De Mesa, Earl Alfred Paus, Jela Dela Peña, Francis Labra

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8:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Conversation with Filmmaker H.P. Mendoza and Writer & Director, Tonilyn A. Sideco.

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 10

10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Queering the Living Archive Panel Discussion
Tonilyn A. Sideco, Moderator – Writer, Director and Creative Educator
Rev Trinity A Ordona, PhD – Activist, Scholar and Historian
Agpalo "Ting" A.J. Alvarez-Maquinta – Multidisciplinary Artist and Cultural Healer
Kimberley Acebo Arteche – Interdisciplinary Artist and Cultural Worker

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12:45 PM - 2:15 PM
Creating in the Diaspora Panel Discussion
kali diwa, Moderator – Community Storyteller and Contributing Writer, HELLA PINAY
Giovanni Ortega – Artistic Director, FilAm Arts Teatro
Sydney Loyola – Philippine Dance Master and Choreographer
Gericault De La Rose – Multidisciplinary Artist and Educator
Cece Carpio – Visual Artist, Curator, and Cultural Worker

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2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
’WAKE’ Artist Talk by Jay Carlon, Choreographer and Dance Artist
Jay Carlon and members of the creative team behind WAKE will discuss their process of building work together in the Filipinx Diaspora.

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7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
An evening of dance and music performances featuring Haraya Dance Project, Pinay Voltron, Jess DeFranco, Johan Casal, Reese Fernandez, Sir Acha, and Adrian Clutario.

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SUNDAY, AUGUST 11

11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Practicing your Artistic Purpose Panel Discussion
Aimee Espiritu, M. Ed, Moderator – Espiritu Consulting
Javier Stell-Frésquez – Artist and Producer/Curator, Weaving Spirits Festival of Two-Spirit Performance, Weaving Spirits
Reese Fernandez – Artist and Donor Communications Manager, BAYCAT
Johan Casal – Artist and Director, Kuya Johan Productions
O.M. France Viana – Artist and Curator, ARROZidency

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1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
"Conjuring Your Coin" Grant Writing Workshop with Beatrice L. Thomas, Director, Authentic Arts & Media
Designed for arts administrators and professionals, this session enhances skills through peer learning, AI tool exploration, and collaborative activities. Participants will develop strategies to craft compelling proposals that genuinely showcase artistic practices. Engage in prompts, journaling, and breakout groups to address common challenges and refine application skills.

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3:10 PM - 4:40 PM
Navigating Grants, Funding, Fiscal Support Panel Discussion
Renee Cyla Villasenor, Moderator – Director of Exhibitions + Operations, Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco
Jonell Molina – Program Officer, San Francisco Arts Commission
Melanie Elvena – Artistic Director, Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center
Wayne Hazzard – Executive Director, Dancers Group
Czarina Garcia – Media Fund Manager, Center for Asian American Media

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Meet the Artists & Panelists

**H.P. Mendoza**

H.P. Mendoza is a Filipino-American filmmaker best known for his work as screenwriter, composer and lyricist on *Colma: The Musical* (2006), as well as his art-house horror film, *I Am a Ghost* (2014) called “H.P. Mendoza’s objet d’art” by Dennis Harvey of Variety. After world premiering at Tribeca 2023, Mendoza recently won the 2023 Best Director award at the Ouray International Film Festival for The Secret Art of Human Flight starring Academy Award nominee Paul Raci.

**Tonilyn A. Sideco**

Tonilyn A. Sideco (they/he) is a SF & Brooklyn-based writer, director and creative educator for both stage and film. Toni has 15+ years experience in the non-profit sector and public school system as a counselor, case manager and creative healing program coordinator and educator working with queer youth and elders and young people of color in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York.

**Agpalo "Ting" A.J. Alvarez-Maquinta**

A Mover, Multidisciplinary artist, and cultural healer/practitioner, Ting is a queer, non-binary Afro-Pinoy descendent who uses their art as a form of visual and oral storytelling like ancestors before them, and instills a holistic and spiritual approach to all forms of art. With an extensive background in root work, as well as being a mammadto and mangngagas, Ting also is deeply entrenched in historical work documenting family history and precolonial Ilokano culture, and learning about living cultures.

**Giovanni Ortega**

Giovanni Ortega is so honored to continuously work with KULARTS since 2008. Directing credits include Smash, Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them as well as Nicky, a modernized adaptation of Chekhov's Ivanov at Art of Acting Studio; The Secret Sharer (DNA Works), Ghost Waltz (Assistant Director/Choreographer, Latino Theatre Co), and more. Playwright credits: The Butterfly of Chula Vista (San Diego Rep commission), Criers for Hire.

**Cece Carpio**

Visual artist, curator, and cultural worker based in the Bay Area. Cece has produced and exhibited work in Cuba, Fiji Islands, Guam, Guatemala, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Nepal, Nicaragua, Norway, Philippines, United Kingdom and throughout the United States. She has been awarded the Rockwood Institute Fellowship for leaders engaged in the Arts as critical agents of change.

Jay Carlon

Jay Carlon (he/they) is a queer dance artist, choreographer and community organizer whose work facilitates shared healing, exploring post-colonial identity, ancestry, and the complex queer/Filipinx experience. The youngest of 12 in a migrant family, Carlon connects a global network of Filipinx creatives and communities. Named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 To Watch,” Carlon has spoken and led workshops at Johns Hopkins, UCLA, UArts, USC, SAIC, and Asians @ Google. Photo by Marissa Mooney.

**Reese Fernandez**

Reese Fernandez (they/them) is a writer, dancer, and drag deity on Tongva and Kizh land in Long Beach, CA. As a nonbinary, gender-fluid, and genre-fluid Pilipinx-American artist, they explore themes of identity in the diaspora, mental health, and embodiment. Reese has had poetry and prose featured in MERCADO VICENTE and The Citadel. Their animated short film Seeing Lily is currently in post-production. They currently work as the Donor Communications Manager at BAYCAT.

Renee Villasenor

Renee Villasenor (they/them) is an arts worker based in the Ramaytush Ohlone homelands (San Francisco Bay Area). Their work, influenced by their identities as a queer, Undocumented immigrant and their love of affect theory, aims to dismantle white supremacy in arts institutions through community-centered collaboration. Villasenor is currently the Director of Exhibitions and Operations at the Institute of Contemporary Art in San Francisco.
Photo by Joanna Garcia Cheran.

**Wayne Hazzard**

Wayne Hazzard is the co-founder and executive director of Dancers’ Group. Hazzard is a leader in the service field who is known for his work with fiscal sponsorship and on new program development; and he was acknowledged as a 2015 Gerbode Professional Development Fellow. Before his manifold career in arts management, Hazzard had a distinguished 20-year career performing with many notable choreographers and companies including the Joe Goode Performance Group, Margaret Jenkins Dance Co, Ed Mock & Co, June Watanabe, Emily Keeler, Aaron Osborne and more.

**Joël Barraquiel Tan**

Joël Barraquiel Tan (siya/he/all pronouns) is the Executive Director at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. He is the author of Type O Negative (Red Hen) and various works on identity, AIDS, and queer politics appearing in academic and commercial venues. Joël co-founded LA’s Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team Health Center and was the Director of Community Engagement at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from 2004-2015.

**Rev Trinity A Ordona, PhD**

Rev Trinity A Ordona, PhD, is an award-winning queer Pilipinx activist, scholar and historian with a 55-year history of civil rights organizing in people of color, women’s and LGBTQ communities here and abroad. Today through Inner Beauty Healing, her self-healing practice with her sister, Francesca, Trinity works with survivors of trauma and violence to access their Inner Wisdom to identify and heal their soul wounds.

**kali diwa**

kali diwa [they//themme], a bastos Bay Area post-binary pin@y femme, moves through the world as a community storyteller, smut slut, and a vessel for healing and change in the diaspora. kali strives to consistently dismantle all the f*cked up ways that heteronormativity messes with our beautiful queer minds as well as abolish all systems that keep us from collective liberation through emergent strategy and pleasure activism.

Gericault De La Rose

Gericault De La Rose is a queer trans Filipinx, multidisciplinary artist, and educator. While developing her art practice, she worked as a Co-curator of Philippine Objects at the Field Museum of Natural History where she organized a series of monthly events called *Pamanang Pinoy* using the objects within the collection as conduits for community discussion. Most recently in 2022, she received the San Francisco Foundation’s Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award and received her MFA from UC Berkeley in 2023.

**Sydney Loyola**

For over three decades, Sydney Loyola has created dance works performed by cultural groups in the US, Philippines, Asia, and Europe. She toured internationally as a principal dancer of Bayanihan Philippine National Folk Dance Company. She is the co-founder of Haraya Dance Project—an ensemble that encourages initiative and participation among Filipino-American trans artists in SF.

**Javier Stell-Frésquez**

Javier Stell-Frésquez (she/he/they pronouns) serves Indigenous communities of the San Francisco Bay. Many years volunteering on the BAAITS Two-Spirits Powwow Committee have lead to her producing Weaving Spirits Festival of Two-Spirit Performance. She currently sits on the BAAITS board. She has life-long performance experience spread across myriad forms, including: Indigenous contemporary, vogue, flamenco, and performance art.

**Melanie Elvena**

An arts organizer, activist, and independent curator living and working in the SF Bay Area, she received her B.A. in Art History from the University of California Irvine with an emphasis in Modern and Contemporary Art. Melanie currently serves as Artistic Director at Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center where she is committed to the community impact and growth of its programs. Melanie also serves as Programs Manager at Asian American Women Artists Association and was the APAture Festival Coordinator for Kearny Street Workshop in the multidisciplinary arts festival’s return in 2013.

**Czarina Garcia**

Czarina Garcia is the Media Fund Manager at the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM). Born and raised in the Philippines, she received her bachelor’s degree in Communication Arts from De La Salle University-Manila. Since migrating to the Bay Area and joining CAAM in 2017, she has worked with the organization in multiple capacities and now administers CAAM's Media Fund initiatives, in accordance with the organization's strategic direction and Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) guidelines.

**Jonell T. Molina**

Jonell T. Molina (he/him/his) is a Program Officer in the Community Investments Department with the SF Arts Commission. As a 2nd generation Filipino-America and son of immigrants, he focuses on providing quality guidance, support, and access to resources/services/events through collaboration with community stakeholders. As an alumni of the Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) his critical pedagogical praxis and responsiveness is rooted in community experiences. Jonell graduated with his Doctorate in Educational Leadership from SF State.

Creative + Production Team

Johan Casal

Project Coordinator & Curatorial Team Member

Johan Casal is a multidisciplinary artist based in the Bay Area producing work in film, music, theater, and dance. He performed as a lead dancer in Netflix’s production of “The Queen’s Ball: A Bridgerton Live Experience,” and directed and produced an original feature film, “Manalo: The Movie Musical,” highlighting the shared struggles of Filipinx-Americans and the diverse cultures of the Philippines.