Penitensya

Image of man with face wrapped with cloth walking down street

 

This project examines the aesthetics and material culture of folk Catholicism in the Philippines. It focuses on passion rituals known as penitensya (penance), a series of collective acts of devotion and bodily mortification that occur annually during Semana Santa. Though portraiture and documentary video, it uses critical, ethnographic, and speculative frameworks to better understand how these expressions of religiosity are tied to history, colonization, and ongoing cultural transformation.

Artist Bio:

Emmanuel David is an interdisciplinary scholar and artist whose work explores gender and sexuality in the Philippines and its diaspora. His scholarship has appeared in ASAP/Journal, Feminist Formations, Gender & Society, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Journal of Asian American Studies; Radical History Review, Sexualities, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, and WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly.