As communities around the globe continue to emerge from the pandemic and grapple with the emotions, isolation, and loss experienced during the past three years, how can art serve as a form of personal healing? Join Filipino artist Xyza Cruz Bacani as she explores the answers to this question and the notion of communicating vulnerability and self-expression through her art.

Leaning on her identity as a transnational citizen living between Hong Kong, the Philippines, and New York, Bacani is widely recognised for her black-and-white photography highlighting underrepresented communities and labour and human rights concerns. In this talk, she will share how she has developed a practice of abstract paintings and installations, which serves as a mediation to her experiences during the pandemic. Using this interdisciplinary approach as a portal for healing and daydreaming, Bacani will elaborate on her search for tenderness and hope in our times, and how recent commissions have helped steer her towards that goal.

This free talk will be held in English and moderated by M+ Assistant Curator of Visual Art Olivia Chow. Simultaneous interpretation in Cantonese and Bahasa Indonesia will be available. Click on ‘Register’ to sign up.

Xyza Cruz Bacani (b. 1987, the Philippines) is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and writer based in New York and Hong Kong. Her experience as a second-generation domestic worker in Hong Kong informs her practice and engagement in less visible, erased, and underreported world events.

Bacani has been recognised as one of Asia Society’s Asia 21 Young Leaders, Artpil’s 30 Under 30 Women Photographers, Forbes’s 30 Under 30 Asia, and BBC’s 100 Women of the World. Her artistic accomplishments are documented by the Philippines House of Representatives under ‘House Resolution No. 1969’. She has received multiple grants, including from the WMA Commission, the Open Society Moving Walls Foundation, and the Pulitzer Center, and was one of the Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellows. She is also the author of We Are Like Air.