A Lens into the Lives and Dreams of Immigrant Workers:

Echoing themes in Guggenheim’s exhibition Tales of Our Time, curator Xiaoyu Weng considers two distinct practices that illuminate the often-overshadowed stories of South East Asian immigrant workers in a conversation with Hong Kong-based Filipina street photographer Xyza Cruz Bacani and Taipei based artist Chia-En Jao. Far from objectified and sensationalized popular-media portrayals, Bacani’s photojournalistic approach documents the workers’ everyday reality, while Jao invites them to retell the dreams they had while asleep in front of the video camera; Each weaving subjective experiences that lie between fiction and reality into the larger social fabric.

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FIELD MEETING’s panel, A Lens into the Lives and Dreams of Immigrant Workers: In Conversation with Xyza Cruz Bacani, Chia-En Jao and Xiaoyu Weng, was supported by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum & The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative

A Lens into the Lives and Dreams of Immigrant Workers: In Conversation with Xyza Cruz Bacani, Chia-En Jao and Xiaoyu Weng, 2016. Panel documentation FIELD MEETING: Thinking Practice, November 11th at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Photo: Renata Carciofolo.

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Xyza Cruz Bacani is a Filipina street and documentary photographer who has been featured in New York Times Lens Blog, CNN, and various international media publications not only for her excellence in photography but also for her inspirational story. Working as a domestic worker in Hong Kong for almost a decade, she used photography to raise awareness about underreported stories, focusing on migrants and human rights issues. She is one of the Magnum Foundation Human Rights Fellows 2015, has exhibited worldwide, won awards in photography, and is the recipient of a resolution passed by the Phillippines House of Representatives in her honor, HR No. 1969. Xyza is one of the BBC’s 100 Women of the World 2015, 30 Under 30 Women Photographers 2016, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2016, and a Fujifilm Ambassador.

Xyza Cruz Bacani, Streets of Hong Kong, 2014. Copyright Xyza Bacani.