About HATAK:

​October is FilAm History Month! Five Fil/-Am founded art spaces are virtually connecting starting Saturday, October 1, and are showcasing a variety of programs throughout the month. Join us as we celebrate the arts across the globe!​

HATAK is a Filipino word used to convey the act of tugging someone along.

​2022 participants include:
Shout out to past​ participants:
Mata Art Gallery Presents

HALIMAW

A solo exhibition of visual artworks by Rialin José opening online Saturday, October 1, 2022.

With special YouTube Premiere opening performance, Sayaw ng Pagitan (≈ Dance of Distance), by Xuvenir at 5pm (PT) on October 1!

Join us for the opening performance watch party, engage with other viewers & the artists in a live chat while we all watch the performance premiere online together for the first time.
And don't forget to turn on notifications for our channel! 🔔

Or...
About the Exhibition:

​Content warning: The following artist statement contains mentions of trauma.

The word HALIMAW means monster in Tagalog. This collection features a variety of creatures from Philippine mythology, including: the bungisngis, aswang, tiyanak, manananggal, nuno, and pugot.

Made with ink and paper, each creature is represented grotesquely, but is also intertwined with deeply human themes. This marriage of the unnatural and natural aims to challenge the juxtaposition of what is good and evil. By tying in uniquely Filipino cultural traits and values, Rialin José hopes to shed light on their dark consequences. HALIMAW explores tsismis (gossip), codependency, childhood trauma, utang na loob (a sense of debt to one's inner-self), respect, piety, and hiya (shame). Some pieces contain phrases in Tagalog and Ilokano.
Sayaw ng Pagitan (≈ Dance of Distance)(2022) is the debut video performance work of LA-based Filipino-American experimental project Xuvenir. Sayaw presents a series of collaged travel footage set to a soundtrack of field recordings and live gong and
electronics improvisations, samples, and loops. These elements amount to a
visual compression of space, place, and time as well as the marriage of ancient
and modern sound technologies emerging in-tension, suspended on the cusp of
legibility.

Xuvenir owes its existence to a questioning about our diasporic identities and, in
the case of Sayaw, our relationship to the gangsa (gongs): an Indigenous
ceremonial and celebratory instrument of the Philippines’ Mt. Province. With
Sayaw, we consider the production of a speculative spatial and sonic imaginary
by asking ourselves: If the Indigenous Igorot concept of antayutani (“we will be
projected far”) signifies a transmission of gangsa frequencies across vast
distances, what then would that signal sound like as received from afar?
Furthermore, in the interval, or space (pagitan) between sender and receiver,
how might the projected sound expand, contract, deform, fracture, or even
erase itself during transit?
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