Sherwin Rivera Tibayan

If you're in Austin, tonight from 6-8 is the reception @aarcatx for a wonderful group show I'm participating in. More info in slide two. Sharing prints from a new series called "Tsinelas" Cheers!

Phone pics of my studies for Balikbayan box plinths and wrapped gifts from last night’s opening reception @contemporaryatx Happy to be in the show with so many committed and amazing artists. Thanks especially to @cultofcybele and @andrea_mellard for bringing all this to life and light. Link in bio for more info about this project! Hope to connect with others in mutual ideas and energies to expand on these works in future iterations. Slide 2 📸 @withacrowe

Post 2 of 2: 1. Mock up of 320 individually folded photograms (8”x10” each) 2. Gernsheim’s drawing of “The First Photograph” 3. Kodak’s attempt to reproduce it in 1952. 4. The Getty Museum and Harry Ransom Center’s attempt in the early 2000s. Link in bio for more info about this project proposal. #photohistory #historyofphotography @notesonphotography #firstphoto #thefirstphoto #thefirstphotograph #helmutgernsheim #josephnicéphoreniépce #gettymuseum #kodak #harryransomcenter #photogram

I’ve come to accept over the years that while I’m a person who is very interested in people and how they act or present themselves in the spaces they occupy and transform, I’m not a photographer who has the temperament, discipline, or affinity for direct portraiture. Even when I do photograph people, I look for ways to present them with absence, incompleteness or indirectness in mind. So that’s what I hope to present with these pictures of “tsinelas” (the tagalog word for slippers): portraits of people. Some background. During a trip to Las Vegas in 2009 I took a quick picture of some house slippers at a party at a friend of a friend of my dad’s, who was with me. I grew up seeing this, so it was a common enough sight for me at the time. I didn’t see this photograph again until I was at home quarantining with my wife and cat in Texas in 2020 (when a lot of photographers had time to stare at their archives). It was difficult, fascinating, and bittersweet to see and reflect on this gathering, messy crowd of slippers—a picture taking moment for me that was more shutterbug muscle memory than a note for a future project—during what would become an extended (and still extending) period of public uncertainty, fear, and anger, all mixed up with private experiences of isolation, loneliness, and social distancing. The Las Vegas photo is the only one in the series before 2020. I like to think that everything taken after it shares a trace of a personal desire from that moment in 2020 upon encountering the image again on my computer: a wish to record if and how we might find our way back to gathering. I’ll finish this post by saying that I’m over the moon for the opportunity to share images from this ongoing series in Las Vegas where the first image was taken!

“Living Here” exhibition opening this week at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at UNLV! @unlvmuseum Feeling really joyful and very connected right now to the conversations the museum is welcoming, encouraging, and caring for in its space with all these artworks. I was invited to spend a week in Las Vegas with the staff at the museum during their installation process so I could make three new Balikbayan box plinths. It was an amazing experience. Along with the new plinths I am also sharing an arrangement of five images from my ongoing “Tsinelas” series. I’ll provide more images and details from my time there in subsequent posts, but first here is info from the museum to help introduce the artists and conversations that are happening and taking shape at the Barrick: The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art is proud to present Living Here, an exhibition of artists from the East and Southeast Asian diasporas. Featuring artists whose ancestries lie in Cambodia, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, Living Here looks at the way that our familiar touchstones—such as food, clothing, and movies—permeate diasporic movement with the sensuous materiality of touch, taste, sight, and sound. The artists are inspired by personal experiences informed by historical events that have shaped their diasporic identities. Some of them call on their memories of home, remembering favorite activities such as karaoke, reassessing their childhood relationships with their parents from a position of adult maturity, or contemplating the future that awaits their own children. Others employ historical research, considering the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, or the Filipino Rough Riders who traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in the late 1800s. The links between past, present, and future are manifested in everyday objects like balikbayan boxes, or in the frustration of English-language autocorrect technology replacing a person’s name with an anglicized alternative.

I’ve had these photographic prints in protective sleeves for a few years now—from two artists whose works, thoughtfulness, curiosity, and spirits I greatly admire—but only recently had them framed. Long overdue, but just so excited and honored to be able to live with them so formally now. Just need to find some wall space! From left to right the artists are Ryan Frigillana (@frigggy ) and Jason Reblando (@jjrebs ). Definitely check out their projects.

Pacita Abad at SFMOMA

Installing work from my @intothemiddledistance series this week @spellerbergprj in Lockhart, TX. Really enjoying the context of this project space as an opportunity to edit and experiment on-site with potential print arrangements. The process is naturally slow, but made slower because of all the bbq spots in town I’m checking out. More details soon, but opens this Saturday with a closing reception at the beginning of November.

Traveling alone a few weeks back and my flight was diverted to Memphis for mechanical issues. Not ideal but I eventually remembered that @tommykha had an artwork on display there. Not a large airport—I think a few terminals were closed off for renovations—and not even like hidden from view, but after 3 trips around the place I finally found it. Best part of my 8 hour delay. I even asked a stranger to take a pic of me with it.

[Print Sale Warning] All this hot UFO summer chatter (and now US Congressional Hearings) has resulted in me getting a higher than normal amount of people reaching out about availability and purchasing of my “Photographic Evidence” print, so wanted to make this post. Yes it is deffo for sale! It’s a personal favorite of mine, and I make signed, open edition prints of it at my home studio in Austin, Texas. If you’re at all interested, it can be purchased online via the print shop I share with my amazing wife @withacrowe . Link in bio. (/) Shown: 15”x20” image on 17”x22” paper (smaller sizes available) Note: Packaging/Shipping in US included in price. If outside of the United States, please DM and we can talk. “Photographic Evidence” is currently on view at this year’s British Journal of Photography’s OpenWalls group exhibition, “Truth”, in Arles, France. It will be on display all summer long at Galerie Huit. Thanks for looking/reading. Ciao for now. #photographicevidence #ufo #ufosighting #printsighting #iwanttobelieve #iwantyoutobuy #thetruthisoutthere #theprintisavailable #printsale #openwallsarles @bjp1854 
@galeriehuitarles

It's time to help our dear friend Adrian out y'all. Please consider sending him much needed funds as he begins the process of recovering from this loss and prepares for a new part of his life in grad school in New York. Link in my story, but Images are screen shots from the GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/5481df76

Y’all!! Excited to say that an image of mine is among the winners in this year’s British Journal of Photography’s OpenWalls exhibition in Arles, France. It will be on display all summer long at Galerie Huit during Les Recontres d’Arles. Congrats to everyone in the show. Zoom zoom zoom on in from my studio pegboard to the pegboard I encountered in Roswell, New Mexico! @bjp1854 @galeriehuitarles @rencontresarles 
#openwallsarles