Previous Winner Spotlight: Veejay Villafranca nominated for Prix Pictet 2023 with latest project 'Barrio Sagrado'.

BARRIO SAGRADO

A spiritual history on the resistance from colonialization
Written by Raya Martin and Veejay Villafranca

The Philippines has the largest population of Roman Catholics in Asia since the introduction of Christianity by Spanish colonists in the early 16th century. By the year 2000, there was an estimated 45,000 religious sects registered as church congregations throughout the country. Filipinos have always strongly engaged their spirituality with political resistance, and the establishment of a sovereign archipelagic country in Southeast Asia is associated with the spiritual beliefs of its culturally diverse population.

Being born and raised in devout Catholic families, this project is a meditative narration of the intersecting complexities of western and indigenous culture superseding a new idea of modernity. Much as the religious idea of “faith” is an invisible system of a community’s utopic ideals, it has also become the Fiipino culture’s basis for its own virtual civilization across and throughout land.
 
The documentation of spiritual practices throughout Philippine history is also the documentation of an alternative history of Filipino struggle and resistance that challenges the Western narrative most of us are only familiar with. It is through the physicalization of the different overlaps of our religious values throughout time that we would be able to understand the circumstances of our own political structures and practices we end up having today.

Text continues here: http://www.veejayvillafranca.com/barrio-sagrado.html