Artist Lizza May David and scholar Rosa Cordillera Castillo elaborate on a feminist critique of migrant labour. They give specific attention to the working conditions of Filipina creation in the European context. They thus take up a theme that has influenced numerous performances in the festival “Sincerely Yours, the Philippines.” The panel will be moderated by writer and transfeminist thinker Jaya Jacobo.
Infos
- Language: English
- Duration: 90 minutes
- Moderation: Jaya Jacobo
Sponsors and Supporters
„Sincerely Yours, the Philippines“ ist ein Projekt des Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm in Kooperation mit dem Goethe-Institut Philippinen. Gefördert durch die Kulturstiftung des Bundes, gefördert von dem Beauftragten für Kultur und Medien. Gefördert durch den Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, das Goethe-Institut und „Philippinen - Ehrengast der Frankfurter Buchmesse 2025“.
Biographies
Lizza May David’s multidisciplinary practice is rooted in painting, which she intertwines with artistic research, collaborations and various other formats. Her work focuses on exploring gaps and silences within personal and institutional archives. Earlier video projects addressed themes of gendered labor migration and memory. She studied at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. Recent exhibitions featuring her work and collaborations including “Nursing the Empire” at the Wiesbaden Biennale 2025, “Close to Home” at Savvy Contemporary Berlin 2025, “As We See Us: A Decolonial Salon des Refusés” at MHAS Berlin 2025, “Stories that We Imagine, Stories that Connect Us” at Kunstverein Langenhagen 2025, and “Forgive Us Our Trespasses” at the House of World Cultures, Berlin, 2024. Born in the Philippines to Filipino parents, she now lives and works in Berlin, identifying with the postmigrant experience after relocating to Germany as a child.
Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo is an anthropologist and curator working on social justice issues through interdisciplinary research, teaching and multi-media knowledge transfer and praxis. Her work spans critical areas of memory, imagination, media and politics, political emotions, solidarity, ethics and decoloniality. Through an interdisciplinary lens, she explores the intersections of these fields, seeking innovative approaches to investigate, theorise and address pressing social issues, with a particular focus on processes and dynamics of dehumanisation and rehumanisation that underlie violence, inequalities and resistance. Currently a Guest Professor at Freie Universität Berlin and an Academic Associate at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa, Rosa held academic positions at the University of Bremen, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies and the University of the Philippines. She was also a curator at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
Jaya Jacobo is a trans feminist poet, scholar and theorist teaching trans and queer studies at the Department of Women and Development Studies at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and was Postdoctoral Fellow of the Global Grace: Gender and Cultures of Equality Programme, funded by the United Kingdom Research Innovation-Global Challenges Research Fund, at the University of the Philippines and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. She has worked alongside travesti and transsexual women artists, scholars and community workers in Brazil, as well as with trans, queer and nonbinary Filipina/x/o performers from the Philippines and Philippine diaspora abroad. She was Founding Co-Editor of Queer Southeast Asia: A Transgressive Journal of Literary Art and Co-Editor of BKL: Bikol/Bakla, Anthology of Bikolnon Gay Trans Queer Writing. Arasahas, her debut volume of poetry in Filipino (Savage Mind, 2023; Pulso, 2025) was a Finalist for Best Book of Poetry in Filipino at the 2024 National Book Awards, and the translation in English by Christian Jil Benitez Arasahas: Poems from the Tropics (PAWA & Paloma, 2024) is a Finalist for the 2025 Lambda Award in Transgender Poetry.