[Manila Iteration]

Exhibition: Errant Life, Promiscuous Form

Curator: Carlos Quijon, Jr.

Dates: May 28 – July 3, 2021

Location: Gravity Art Space, Quezon City, Philippines

Artists Exhibited: Samak Kosem, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Pam Quinto, Mark Salvatus & Seekersinternational, Jao San Pedro, Tan Zi Hao, Isola Tong, Yim Yen Sum

[Barcelona Iteration]

Exhibition: Swab Art Fair 2021

Dates: October 7–10, 2021

Location: Pavelló Italià, Plaça de Carles Buïgas, Barcelona, Spain

Presented by: Tangent Projects

Artists Exhibited: Lizette Nin, Katy B Plummer, and Isola Tong

Florophilia (2021) is an intermedia installation that expands on an ongoing research into urban forest ecologies, in this case, the ecology within Arroceros Forest Park in Manila. As an iteration of the Forest of Agencies project, the work reimagines the urban forest as both a site of resistance and an explorative locus of transecological intimacies. Drawing from the Ecosexual Manifesto by Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, Florophilia explores the sensuous morphologies of the forest as a phenomenological skinship between human and nonhuman agencies. The ecological entanglement is framed as a form of “haptic ecological lovemaking,” a queer communion between species that challenges anthropocentric narratives of environmental exploitation.

At the heart of Florophilia is the phallomorphic seed pods of the fire tree (Delonix regia), an exotic species introduced to the Philippines during Spanish colonial rule. Once called “arbol del fuego,” the tree’s fiery blossoms signal the coming of the wet monsoon season, an event that links to metaphors of transformation. In the installation, a ghillie suit worn during research trips, stands on a mannequin, surrounded by fire tree pods and other collected plant matter. This suit functions as both a second skin and an interface, mediating an embodied encounter with the forest’s material life. The work foregrounds the sensuous encounter with the urban forest while the camouflage suit used in warfare alludes to the colonial history of the site as a military garrison under the U.S. rule. 

Presented in Errant Life, Promiscuous Form, curated by Carlos Quijon, Jr., Florophilia engages with broader themes of interspecies intimacy, material vitality, and the errancy of life forms as they circulate and transform. The exhibition, co-organized by Gravity Art Space and A+ Works of Art, brought together artists from Manila, Kuala Lumpur, and Bangkok whose works interrogate the interfacings between life and form. The installation contributes to this discourse by positioning the body as an active site of ecological entanglement, where identity, landscape, and desire blur into one another. Through Florophilia, she invites viewers to rethink their relationships with the more-than-human world—not as passive observers, but as intimate, entangled participants in the ongoing processes of environmental becoming.