VOID: Joshua Serafin

The center and titular character of Joshua Serafin’s performance work is a speculative deity and an oneiric alter-ego; a fluid, undefinable, primordial being who represents an ancient, ancestral body and who Joshua dances into life in a soundscape of recorded and live music performed by Alex Zhang Hungtai and Calvin Carrier.

At once an invocation, a reincarnation, and an exorcism, VOID draws on the creation myths and precolonial history of the Philippine archipelago to imagine a speculative future where the imposed ideology of colonial patriarchy gives way to more ancient, more fluid, and more liberated modes of being. Performed outdoors at dusk within a fluid scenography of smoke, light, and ectoplasmic soil, VOIDproposes that the liberation of all bodies does not merely belong to a hypothetical future but is deeply rooted in precolonial modes of thought and categories of identification.

VOID accompanies Joshua’s three-channel video installation (2023), on view in Amant’s 932 Grand Street gallery from June 27 through August 19, 2024.

About Joshua Serafin

Joshua Serafin (they/she) is a multi-disciplinary artist who combines dance, performance, visual arts, and choreography. Born in the Philippines in 1995, they are currently based in Brussels. They are a house artist of Viernulvier for the season 2023-2027. They studied contemporary dance at Hong Kong Academy and later on graduated from P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels. Joshua received a Bachelor’s in Performance in 2021 and a Master’s in Fine Arts in 2022 from KASK, where they were the recipient of the Horlait-Dapsens Prize. They premiered their first solo work “Miss” in VIERNULVIER and have since collaborated with multiple artists in Asia and Europe. Their work has been shown internationally, most notably in Esplanade in Singapore, BIT Teatergarasjen, Norway; Anti Festival, Finland; Nightshift, Ostende; Beursschowburg, Brussels; Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; TONO Festival, Mexico City; and Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin. They were an official participant in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia curated by Adriano Pedrosa.

Joshua’s artistic process is an intense sociological exorcism of Filipino identity about global ideologies and contemporary phenomena, unpacking the historical violence of its feudal contemporary society and its dehumanizing normality. Joshua’s globally acclaimed performance is committed to dwelling within interstitial spaces, a refusal to participate in dimorphic structures so they can craft an idiom where they can speak from in-betweenness and translate ideas of alterity into forms of speculation.

Joshua Serafin, VOID, 2023. Photo by Tai Ngai Lung, courtesy of Tai Kwun Contemporary.

Host or Publisher Amant Foundation