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Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho

Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho have a collaborative artistic practice that moves from the Philippines outwards to other places, addressing localized iterations of labor and capital from the perspective of postcolonial damage. Their projects often involve an immersive period of research or living within a locale, during which they try to identify particular points of tension that speak to the selective disorganization of lives and worlds in the service of profit and development. They have published in Southeast of Now, Texte zur Kunst, and Flash Art, and have exhibited at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Kunstverein Freiburg (Germany), the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College (Annadale-on-Hudson, New York), Green Papaya Art Projects (Quezon City, Manila, Philippines), 47 Canal (New York, New York), the Jim Thompson Art Center (Bangkok, Thailand), and the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing, China).

Surviving Tiempo Muerto: On Bungkalan and Peasant Resistance in the Philippines

The island of Negros is known as “the sugar bowl of the Philippines.” But such romantic imagery obscures a dark reality: during tiempo muerto—the “dead time” between sowing and harvesting cane—farm laborers there go without wages and food. “It is death built into the clockwork mandate of the sugar plantation,” write Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho in their Artist Op-Ed.