Visual artist Eunice Sanchez from the Philippines undertook a 1-month residency at Rimbun Dahan in February 2023.
About the Artist
Eunice Sanchez engages with themes related to preservation and perception through photography and alternative photographic processes. She recontextualizes the materiality of her medium to demonstrate the demand for history to be re-examined. She has participated in several exhibitions in the Philippines, Cambodia, Singapore, and UAE. She was named the Silver Recipient in the book (self-published/documentary) category at the International Photography Awards Philippines (2017) and was a resident at Visualizing Histories, a collaborative project between The Museum Collective, Load Na Dito, and Sa Sa Art Projects, supported by Asian Cultural Council (2021). She was also selected for the ASEAN Artists Residency Programme, a residency project held by ASEAN Secretariat, Maybank Foundation, and Sharjah Art Foundation (2022).
Sanchez holds a Bachelor’s degree in Photography from De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (2018) and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from De La Salle University (2014).
Born in 1993 in La Union, Philippines, Sanchez currently lives and works in Manila.
Website: https://eunicesanchez.portfolio.site
Instagram: @eun.sanchez
About the Residency
“In 2021, I created a catalogue consisting of foliage I wish I could grow. Perhaps the catalogue was also formed to resemble and preserve a different reality I wish I could be in; a reality where I have the ability to nurture anything.
“In my residency, I kept finding myself expanding that catalogue and made a project I call sa hardin, may bukas. Rimbun Dahan has allowed me to depict my own garden that champions life – a way of reclaiming. Through cyanotype printing and by mending images of nature and city textures, I went further by finding likeness to humanity’s persistence to exist even in spaces that constantly hinder growth and inflict destruction. I’m referencing from my own narrative and from friends’ common sentiment on surviving Metro Manila. More and more are lost. Like foliage struggling to grow in corners of a city, we learn to look at different forms of death and reflect on what remains. Fear grows because everything seems to be repeating itself and we assume where it is heading.
“But in the garden, deficiencies and weaknesses are forgiven. In the garden, one is capable of nurturing; a permission to create and grant oneself the kind of healing that time can never give. To tend a garden is a consolation giving us everything we’ve ever imagined despite the days being inevitably followed by anything darker and more difficult.
“I’ve learned long enough that I can’t hold things together. But to tend a garden is a conviction: promise of a better tomorrow.”
