LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- Offerings for Escalante marks the first major US museum exhibition of artist duo Enzo Camacho (Filipino, b. 1985) and Ami Lien (American, b. 1987), on view October 10, 2024 through February 17, 2025 at MoMA PS1. For over a decade, Camacho and Lien’s multidisciplinary practice has addressed localized resistance within globalized economies of labor, particularly in the Philippines. Through newly produced moving image works and a light-based installation, as well as a suite of handmade paper works, the exhibition centers the Philippine island of Negros, a site known for its sugar plantations. With a focused attention on narratives at the margins, the artists examine how historical events continue to shape contemporary life in the region and beyond.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is Langit Lupa (2023), a newly commissioned hour long film that draws attention to state repression in Negros, where the artists have regularly visited since 2017. Exploring the entanglements of ecological and sociopolitical violence, Camacho and Lien turn their attention to the 1985 Escalante Massacre, an event in which a protest for better living and working conditions under the dictatorial Marcos regime turned deadly after state-affiliated paramilitary troops opened fire on the crowd, killing at least 20 people. The film narrates the tragedy through the testimonies of survivors, many of whom are members of an advocacy group called Mothers and Relatives Against Tyranny and Repression (MARTYR). Mapping the effects of local violence across generations, the film recounts the 1985 massacre to highlight resonances with the present-day situation in Negros, where escalating militarized campaigns against farmers’ rights have resulted in several recent incidents of political violence, including a 2018 massacre of nine protesting farmers in Sagay, a small city next to Escalante where the artists stayed during the film production period. Eschewing archival footage, Camacho and Lien pair their interview audio with wide landscape shots showing the social and natural environment of the island, intimate iPhone footage of local children at play, and extended sequences of 16mm phytograms, an analog photographic process in which botanical matter is treated and then placed on the film emulsion to reveal intricate chemical traces. Throughout their practice, Camacho and Lien center forms of survival and resistance, both human and natural, to contend with historical violence.

In groupings of handmade paper works also on view, the artists underscore local fauna as silent witnesses to generational struggles. Using vegetal fibers such as cogon grass, pineapple, seaweed, and taro stems, Camacho and Lien create landscapes that draw on Philippine folklore. Social Volcano (restless waves) (2024) recalls an active volcano on Negros called Mount Kanlaon, which became an important symbol of resistance in the 1970s. Artworks in the Flame Garden series use beeswax, abaca pulp, banana stalk, cilantro, and algae to illustrate concepts of survival. The artists draw on philosopher Sylvia Winters’ 1971 essay “Novel and History, Plot and Plantation,” which describes gardens within plantations in which enslaved Jamaicans cultivated their own food and culture. “We’ve been thinking a lot about the logic of compost,” Camacho says. “If you think about it metaphorically, [it is] about how to build something else from the debris of the broken system [in which] we’re living.”

Bridging transnational struggles impacted by extractivist plantation economies, Offerings for Escalante emphasizes interconnected issues of land justice, food sovereignty, and anti-imperialist resistance. Alongside the exhibition, an installation in PS1’s double-height first floor gallery will present the related work of Philippine and Queens-based justice groups advocating for better labor conditions.

Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien are based between New York, Manila, and Berlin. Solo exhibitions of their work have been held at the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art; Center for Contemporary Art Berlin; Para Site, Hong Kong; Kunstverein Freiburg; and Green Papaya Art Projects, Quezon City, Philippines. They have been included in group exhibitions at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; the Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; the New Museum, New York; the EVA International, Limerick; Manifesta 13, Marseille; The Drawing Center, New York; the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei; the Brunei Gallery, SOAS University of London; the NTU Center for Contemporary Art, Singapore; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok; and Green Papaya Art Projects, Manila. They are currently Senior Fellows at the Lunder Institute of American Art at Colby College.

Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien: Offerings for Escalante is organized by Ruba Katrib, Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, MoMA PS1.