Sea of Love / Dagat ng Pag-ibig
Artist Talk with Jon Cuyson
An
event by the Island Tides Initiative - Department of Artistic Strategie
Paglalayag, meaning sailing
or voyaging in Filipino, is a traveling series of screenings, conversations, and gatherings that grew out of Sea of Love
/ Dagat ng Pag-ibig, the exhibition for the Philippine Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale, curated by Mara
Gladstone and developed in dialogue with Jose Mari Cuartero. Conceived as a continuation rather
than a conclusion, the Paglalayag carries the questions of Sea of Love beyond Venice. Like a voyage, it takes shape through
the places it reaches and the people it meets. Each gathering becomes a temporary harbor for listening, sharing stories, and
exchanging ideas.
The conversation includes a screening of Sea of Echoes, an experimental
short film narrated from the perspective of mussels living within a mussel farm in Cavite City. Their voices open questions
about labor, ecology, survival, and care across human and more than human worlds.
Jon Cuyson is
a Filipino artist and filmmaker working across painting, sculpture, installation, sound, and moving image. His work explores
maritime histories, migration, labor, queer experience, memory, and ecology, often returning to the sea as a place where personal
and collective histories meet. Cuyson is the artist for the Philippine Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale, where his exhibition
Sea of Love / Dagat ng Pag-ibig approaches the sea as a living archive of migration, desire, labor, and belonging.
An important thread in his work is Pag-iisip Tahong (Mussel Thinking), which draws on filtration, clustering,
and adaptation to consider survival through relation. These ideas extend into Sea of Love: Paglalayag Series, a traveling
program of screenings, conversations, and gatherings that allows the work to continue evolving through encounters with different
places and communities.
