In Muva We Trust

Hamer Hall façade is transformed by Filipino future folklore, as artists Justin Talplacido Shoulder and Bhenji Ra emerge from the belly of an ancient beast—The Bywaya.

In Muva We Trust builds on stories from Club Até collective’s video projects ‘Ex Nilalang’ and ‘Ang Idol Ko’. Set in the Skyworld: a borderless space of potentiality and rematriation, origin stories are reimagined to include bodies of multiplicity and interwoven multi-species kinship structures. It explores ideas of reciprocity, stories of life, death, mourning and celebration. Here the past and future merge in free flow.

The work draws on ancestral figures from the Buwaya (crocodile) and draws on historical accounts of the Babaylan, queer and trans shamans in the Philippines who act as intermediaries between visible and invisible worlds. In some accounts, the Babaylan were decapitated and fed to the Buwaya. Club Até reimagines these horrifying acts as future folklore where artists Justin Talplacido Shoulder and Bhenji Rabe come new idols emerging ‘out of the belly of the Buwaya, empowered and attuned to the ancient beast’.

Ra and Shoulder formed Club Até collective in 2014. Their practice traverses video, performance and club events with an emphasis on community activation. Collaborating with members of the queer Asia-Pacific diaspora in Australia and the Philippines, the collective are invested in creating their own “future folklore”.