Beyond The God’s Eye
Historically, maps have served as a panoptic technology, assisting imperial powers in governance, discipline, and control. Their visualisations have reinforced the dominance of colonialist rulers while marginalising entire regions and peoples. In his art practice, Cian Dayrit acts as a counter-cartographer, reclaiming mapmaking as an emancipatory activity.
Dayrit’s cartographic artworks, embroidered on textiles or painted over collages of colonial-era maps, plot the extraction of natural resources, land grabbing, and dispossession. At the same time, their resistant lines summon new imaginaries out of the overlaps between places and memories. They remind viewers how empire scored out the borders of the modern world and how its aftermath perpetuates industrial development, while inviting us to reconsider the ways in which we spatially perceive and interpret the world.
Dayrit’s practice is critically and practically informed by the narratives of peoples who encounter issues of “spacio-cide”, a term coined by Syrian-Palestinian author Sari Hanafi to describe the destruction or removal of displaced peoples’ lived spaces. The artist has convened map-drawing workshops with rural, urban and indigenous communities in his native Philippines, examples of which are included in this presentation of available works. “Beyond the God’s Eye” activates alternative territories from the ground-up.
“Spacio-cide is a term used to describe the destruction or removal of displaced peoples’ lived spaces”
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Inside Cian Dayrit studio, Rizal, Philippines
About Cian Dayrit
b. 1989 Manila, Philippines. Based in Rizal, Philippines
Dayrit studied painting at the University of the Philippines, and won an Ateneo Art Award in 2017. He has completed a residency at Gasworks, London and is a member of SAKA, Artist Alliance for Land Reform and Rural Development in the Philippines.
This year he participated in the 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art and the 13th Gwangju Biennale. Among other notable shows include participating in the New Museum Triennial "Songs for Sabotage" in New York and Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh, as well as group exhibitions at ParaSite, Hong Kong, Hammer Museum, L.A, IFAN Museum of African Arts in Dakar and the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.
+ Selected Exhibitions
11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, 2020
Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, Gwangju Biennale, 2020
We move amongst ghosts, Museum of Fine Arts and Ceramics, Jakarta – Indonesia, 2020
Winning by losing, CentroCentro, Madrid, 2019
Songs For Sabotage, New Museum, New York, 2018
A Beast, A God, And A Line, Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka; Parasite, Hong Kong; Pyinsa Rasa Art Space, Yangon; and Museum Of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2018
Stories Of Almost Everyone, Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, 2018
Seascapes: Tranquility And Agitation Metropolitan, Museum Of Manila, Manila, 2017
The Philippine Contemporary: To Scale The Past And The Possible, Metropolitan Museum Of Manila, Manila, 2017
Viewing Room
In collaboration with Nome Gallery, Berlin, we are pleased to present a collection of five works by Cian Dayrit
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Email the team your questions at studio@artthou.co.uk