Words by Renz Baluyot

I started my residency around mid-September and settled inside the Art District, where Orange Project is located. During my three-week stay, I had the opportunity to engage with Negros’ vibrant art community, see historical and cultural sites, and briefly experience living in Bacolod City. I was able to go around the neighborhood markets and places where I can possibly source materials for my work, interact with the local sugarcane farmers, and enjoy a fair share of “inasal” and “kansi.”

Aside from the days where the Orange Project team set for us to do a tour and/or studio visits in and out of Bacolod, the residency program was quite open and flexible, allowing me to map my own direction in terms of where I intend to lead my research and immersion. The team was very receptive and accommodating whenever I shared my ideas and answered my inquiries, helping me understand the history of Negros, its current state, and the context of the materials that I chose to possibly incorporate into my work and practice. To conclude my stay, I held an artist talk at Orange Project to share my own creative practice with the local audience.

For the work that I will be presenting for Art Fair Philippines, I plan on focusing on the sugarcane farmers. Negros’ history and economy rely greatly on the production of sugar and those who labor to produce it. Drawing inspiration from this subject and my brief immersion and interaction with the locals and the farmers, I plan to make a sculptural installation piece using locally sourced farming implements and materials inspired by the things I learned during my stay.
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Renz Baluyot (b. 1989, Saudi Arabia) is a Filipino visual artist born in Saudi Arabia and based in the Philippines. Touching on thematics and narratives that depict various manifestations of decay and disintegration in society, Baluyot’s artistic expression takes the form of a painting and an installation. The contexts of his subjects are often derived from his keen observation of the intersectionality of socio-political conditions across territories and among nations through the examination of institutional archives and records.