MAUREEN CATBAGAN . Dark Matter
Digital Print Triptychs
This series is a meditation on the question of representation and the perceptual conditions that enable us to see not only art, but also multiple forms of difference. I photograph staircases, ceilings, passageways, and guards within museums, essential components that are seldom considered. They occupy a complicated relationship to functionality and value, much like the conditions of labor within capital. These triptychs center and translate peripheral bodies and spaces into alternate forms of possibility and agency by activating strategies of temporal looping, listening, and shadow work. I approach representation through sensation, in order to perceive the fullness of what is absent within the Western frame. These aesthetic disruptions shift dominant paradigms of objectification and labor to produce radical reorientations.
Maureen Catbagan is a Filipinx American, multi-media artist based in New York whose work engages social collectivity, examines relations between identity and experience, and explores new forms of empowerments. Collaborative projects include Flux Factory and HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN? Collectives. They have also written critical essays with Dr. Amber Jamilla Musser. Catbagan has exhibited in venues such as ARoS Museum in Denmark, Witte de Withe Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and The Contemporary Museum of Honolulu. Their current collaborative work with artist Jevijoe Vitug as Abang-guard focuses on immigrant experience within the context of labor and visibility.