Series

Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth)

An ongoing artist residency

Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa, The Symposium

Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa, A Film Screening, Conversation, and Celebration

On Heaven, Earth, Hell

For over a decade, Berlin and New York-based artists Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien have developed a multidisciplinary practice addressing geopolitical relations by attending to localized forms of dispossession, survival, and resistance, particularly in the context of the Philippines. Their current work pays particular attention to agricultural practices and the exploitation of land and labor in Negros, an island known for sugarcane production in the Philippines. The prevalence of state-sanctioned violence that accompanies this plantation economy has led them to reflect upon mourning as a form of collective action. Throughout their field research, they work alongside activists, survivors, and other local community members to both attend to the loss of lives and livelihoods and gesture towards an undergrowth of resistant practices.

The artist’s residency in Los Angeles centered on a weekend of public events at 2220 Arts + Archives, illuminating the interconnected struggles over land, memory, and militarization on the road to Philippine liberation. Camacho and Lien invited activists, artists, culture and knowledge workers, and food folks based in Southern California to convene across a series of programs, which included a film screening, symposium, and community celebration, entreating various publics across LA to learn from, share space with, and act in solidarity with the Philippine people’s struggle.

The first season of AC’s work with the artists began with commissioned writings, published online and in conjunction with their international exhibition, Offerings for Escalante. The first, “On Heaven, Earth, Hell” by scholar Eunsong Kim, introduced the artists’ experimental documentary, Langit Lupa (2023), which documents their recent time in the Philippines and lays the historical and practical groundwork for their time in Los Angeles. During their residency, Camacho and Lien partnered with local grassroots organizations and LA-based artist Carol Anne McChrystal in a series of community sessions featuring foraging walks, conversations, and paper-making workshops in Historic Filipinotown, holding space for the connections between displacement, sustainable housing, and migrant justice.

About the Artists

Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien are artists and writers from the Philippines and the US respectively. Together, they have an artistic practice that moves from the Philippines outward to other places, addressing localized iterations of labor and capital from the perspective of imperial damage. They have had solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Freiburg (2018); and Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2018). Their work has been included in recent group exhibitions at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2022); the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2021); the 5th New Museum Triennial, New York (2021); the 39th EVA International, Limerick (2021); Manifesta 13, Marseille (2020); the Drawing Center, New York (2020); the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei (2019); the Brunei Gallery, SOAS University of London (2019); the NTU Center for Contemporary Art, Singapore (2018); UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2017); Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok (2017); and Green Papaya Art Projects, Manila (2009). From 2021 to 2023, Camacho and Lien were fellows at the Graduate School of the Universität der Kunste, Berlin.

Credits

Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth) is supported in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov.

This program is also made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Langit Lupa is organized by Active Cultures with support of artist TJ Shin as Project Manager.

Active Cultures year round programming is also made possible through the generous support of its Board of Directors; the Gatherers Annual Fund; the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture as part of Creative Recovery LA, an initiative funded by the American Rescue Plan; and by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Cultures.