Lizza May David works across media with a keen eye on colonial reverberations often connected to Filipino realities. She scrutinizes the commodification of care practices or, more generally, private experiences and archives. David’s practice makes use of visual breaks, frictions, and dissonances to destabilize unquestioned truths manifesting in the visual material she is working with. The video work The Model Family Award (2008) is the result of multiple trespassings; to generate the images for this work, David posed as a journalist to acquire priority access to document an award show organized to celebrate the achievements of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW). The show is exposed as a Trojan horse to foster the commodification of labour by concealing the economic realities behind seemingly ‘successful’ family stories. She defies the expectation that journalists present will merely amplify the award show’s aims by making the viewer aware of the artificiality of the categories that contribute to scoring higher as a model family, such as reproductive successes, the ability to generate income, or other modes of productivity. The glitzy scenography of a beauty pageant creates an almost surreal setting, but it also generates visual familiarity. David deliberately employs a so-called amateur approach in the work, for example in choosing to using a hand-held camera for image production. In doing so, she enforces an affective distance to what is portrayed, creating room to expose the almost desperate reinforcement of gender stereotypes and the promise of shinier future imaginaries.

Work in the exhibition: The Model Family Award (2008), 1-channel video, 11' 24'', English and Tagalog with English subtitles. Courtesy of the artist