Emmanuel David

Emmanuel David is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar whose work explores gender and sexuality in the Philippines and its diaspora. Trained as an ethnographer and documentary photographer, his work focuses on the lived experiences of Filipino/a/x subjects and their relation to labor, economic globalization, race, ethnicity, historical formations of capital, and empire.

As an artist, his research-based creative work spans multiple mediums, including photography, video, performance, and installation. He is currently working on a project that examines the rituals and material culture of folk religion and revolt in the Philippines from the colonial period to the present.

At the center of this multi-media work are the rituals of penitensya (penance) practiced during Semana Santa and their long historical ties to colonial violence and anti-colonial resistance. The project reinterprets these practices –– and related archival and material objects –– through a queer lens.

Taking these homosocial religious rituals as a point of departure, his work examines public performances of discipline, devotion, power, and desire through their associations with racialized queer aesthetics and erotic practices.

Public performances related to this project include “Algo Se Siente (Something is Felt),” in collaboration with Guido Ignatti at Eyddos Gallery in Madrid, and “Harness,” in collaboration with Jay Carlon at WIPLA in Los Angeles. Both public performances, as extensions of his current practice, explored the body as sites of ritual, protest, collective care, and erotic power. 

He is also collaborating with artist Yumi Janairo Roth on a separate research-based project that explores histories of Filipinos in the American West. Their project on the Filipino Rough Riders has been included in exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Autry Museum of the American West, the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and the David B. Smith Gallery.