Rydel Cerezo was born in a city nestled in the mountains of the Philippines called Baguio, but at the age of ten, he and his family moved to Vancouver, Canada, city where is now based and working as a visual artist. He holds a Bachelor in Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Arts and Design. His work investigates the space between sexuality and religion, race and beauty, identity and culture. He is interested in how these disparate themes metaphorically and visually merge.
During the current year, his pictures has been exhibited at Aperture Foundation’s Summer Open Exhibition called Delirious Cities, during Vogue Italia’s PhotoVogue Festival called A Glitch in the System, and recently shortlisted for the upcoming The Lind Prize 2020 Exhibition. His work has been featured in It’s Nice That and Dazed.
Rydel is a compelling photographer who likes to use his camera to explore complex personal and universal themes by shooting sensitive portraits and still life; the colours of his images are saturated and sparkling at the same time, capturing the eye.
About ‘Am I a Sea’ – words by Rydel Cerezo:
Am I a Sea is an autobiographical series exploring my relationship with Roman Catholicism as a queer Filipino man. I used my younger brother as a mirror to reflect the precariousness of my position in this unescapable relationship fraught with trauma and love provided by the institution and at home. He then becomes a stand into the present and past personal and collective experiences of immigrant children within the Roman Catholic institution.
Am I a Sea attempts to call upon the 333 years of western Spanish colonization over the Philippines and image the consequences of intergeneration trauma within the Filipino body. The inability to escape is realized as a consequence of centuries of colonization and familial inheritance. I am interested in the history of the church that served as a tool involved in the colonial mission and now acts as a space for bodies to commune with one another in the Diaspora. Playing between the spaces of what is staged and what is a documentary, Am I a Sea disrupts the gesture within a ritual. This work is an attempt to renavigate and probe the familiar space that is the church in relation to the living post-colonized body.
