As an artist, I have made work about personal relationships, as seen in my performance called Grip (2004). I have recreated the feeling of being intimate with someone for the first time in a performance called First Kiss (2004). This background in performative-based processes foregrounds my recent photographic, video, and print media creations.

From 2006-2011 I started Some of Us Part, a series of portraits of my mixed race family. The photos were quiet documents reenacting moments of harmony and wonder. Our marriage had challenges in communication and empathy and as the series of images continued to grow, our family portrait recreations became a reflection of these challenges.

More recently, my interest is in my mother Vida’s story as a seamstress from Manila who migrated to Winnipeg in 1972. I am fascinated with her assimilation to a westernized culture the years prior to her getting married in 1974. Poise (2019) is a series of 5 short films that take place in Winnipeg’s Centennial and Downtown core area. They document my performances of finding and realigning archival photographs that were taken of my mother during this timeframe. By going to the sites where these images were taken I am paying homage to her migration story and how it has informed my identity.

Through this new body of work entitled Vida, I explore Filipino diaspora cultural themes from the past, like the duty to provide for one’s family in the Philippines by working abroad and what that looked like for her then. If she was engaged to my father prior to leaving for Canada, what was their correspondence like? As a recent immigrant, what were her challenges to keep her food, religion, and language customs intact?

crvenzon@gmail.com / +1 204 898 4818