Liryc Dela Cruz
Photo by: Andrea Pizzalis
In residence: November - December 2024
Liryc Dela Cruz is an artist and filmmaker from Tupi, South Cotabato in Mindanao, Philippines based in Rome, Italy. His work has been performed and shown at numerous international film festivals and contemporary art venues, including: Locarno Film Festival, Matadero (Madrid), La Neomudéjar (Madrid), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), UK New Artist, Artissima (Turin), Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Roma (MACRO), Teatro di Roma (Rome), La Biennale di Venezia and Ocean Space (Venice).
At a young age, Dela Cruz received the Bamboo Camera Award from the Father of independent cinema in the Philippines, Kidlat Tahimik. Dela Cruz has collaborated with and been mentored by the independent cinema’s master filmmaker Lav Diaz, alongside figures such as Hadji Balajadia, Françoise Vergès, Simon Njami, Gutierrez Mangansakan, Chantal Akerman, and Anna Daneri. In 2020, he was selected as one of the young emerging filmmakers of Berlinale Talents during the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, Berlinale. Dela Cruz's films are thematically related to his origins, history, biography and interiority, while his performances and research are focused on care, hospitality, indigenous practices, decolonial practices, post-colonial Philippines, and the transpacific trade of enslaved people. In 2021, Dela Cruz debuted his ongoing research project Il Mio Filippino as a performance at Teatro India - Teatro Nazionale in Rome, in collaboration with Filipino domestic and care workers. In 2020 the project received the Artissima - Torino Social Impact Art Award. Dela Cruz also participated in Mattatoio di Roma’s Prender-si cura residency programme in 2022. Dela Cruz was selected as fellow at the TBA21 (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary) Ocean Fellowship, where he initiated a project based on indigenous care and hospitality in the Philippines, drawing from the diary of Antonio Pigafetta titled Ocean as a Space of Perpetual Care.
In 2023 he was selected as one of the artists in residence by the Academy in Exile at Freie Universität Berlin, and as a participating artist of Santarcangelo Festival for the IN EX(ILE) LAB 2023-2024. Dela Cruz has performed at the 59th Venice Biennale under the Sami Pavilion and aabaakwaad. In 2023, he premiered his new research performance Kay Kami Mga Mananap (Because We Are Beasts) in Udine Far East Film Festival, a reimagination of the artist on the concept of intimacy and eroticism in pre-colonial Philippines. The same year, Dela Cruz inaugurated his first major exhibition "Il Mio Filippino: For Those Who Care To See" in Mattatotio di Roma regarding the trajectory of his multi-year research on exhaustion, slavery, care, hospitality and colonial history of the Philippines.