Artist Statement
Abang-guard questions and reorients relationships between identity, labor, and value within cultural institutions. As Filipinx artists and museum workers, they cultivate an awareness of institutional non-space which consists of the peripheral structures and hidden labor that support cultural framing. Abang-guard utilizes video, sculpture, photography, and performance to produce an aesthetics of vibrant peripheries, moving institutional framing towards the support structures of intersecting communities and the labor of hidden bodies. Focusing on and transforming peripheral elements not only expands the representational field but also challenges the limits of social sight. They render labor visible by layering and juxtaposing community history, spatial disruptions, inner monologues, and multiple conceptions of the shadow. Abang-guard’s projects and performances reveal alternate possibilities within museum spaces and build processes of intimacy and care between bodies and objects to envision other ways of seeing, activating, and producing cultural value. They engage viewers to perceive what else exists within the cultural frame and what else is possible outside of it.
About Maureen Catbagan
Abang-guard is a collaborative project between artists Maureen Catbagan and Jevijoe Vitug that explores the intersections of immigration, labor, and visibility. Reflecting on the artistic strategies of the avant-garde, they infuse personal history and art practice with theoretical humor to convey the complexity and nuances between cultural production, institutional structures, and the role of labor. The project began in 2017 through their occupation as museum guards. Since then, Abang-guard has performed Artists on Artworks: Abang-guard at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (2022) and Help Wanted! at Governors Island, NY (2022); and at venues including ARoS Public Atelier, Denmark (2022); Abrons Art Center, New York, NY (2021), as well as Flux Takeover! at Socrates Park and Flux Factory, Queens, NY (2019). Recent exhibitions include Invisible Hands at 601 Artspace, New York, NY (2023) and in pieces at PS122 Gallery, New York, NY (2023).
