Books

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"Queertopia Is a Country That Does Not Exist: An Interview with Juius Poncelet Manapul", by Julius Poncelet Manapul and Marissa Largo.     

By Robert Diaz, Marissa Largo and Fritz Pino.     Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos and Canadian Imaginaries is the first edited volume of its kind, featuring the works of leading scholars, artists, and activists who reflect on the contributions of queer Filipinos to Canadian culture and society.     As it foregrounds the experiences of diasporic Filipinos outside of the United States, Diasporic Intimacies also acknowledges the role that Canada plays in learning about the vibrant articulations of kinship, intimacy, and culture that many Filipinos enact in this settler colonial space. Through the lens of sexuality and gender, this groundbreaking collection investigates how diasporic communities engage with the Canadian nation-state, which continues to discipline our notions of difference through official policies of multiculturalism.

"A Country That Dose Not Exist: The Queer Decolonial Aesthetic of Julius Poncelet Manapul", by Marissa Largo.

Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA) is an  international, peer-reviewed journal that features multidisciplinary  scholarship on intersections between visual culture studies and the  study of Asian diasporas across the Americas. Perspectives on and from  North, Central and South America, as well as the Pacific Islands and the  Caribbean are presented in order to encourage a hemispheric  transnational approach to diverse visual cultures. Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas  is published by Brill (Leiden/Boston) in affiliation with the  Asian/Pacific/American Institute, New York University (New York) and the  Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art,  Concordia University (Montreal).

Julius Poncelet Manapul's use of objects and antiquities are translated through Filipinx lens in affects of the Spanish colonial history from the Philippines. Addressing whitewashing, displacements, and the unsettled loss of cultural authenticity. Addressing eternal displacement through themes of colonialism, sexual  identity, diasporic bodies, global identity construction, and the  Eurocentric Western hegemony, my artwork focuses on the hybrid nature of  Filipinx culture after colonialism and the gaze of queer identities as  taxonomy. My recent research project looks at the narratives for many  diasporic queer bodies that create an unattainable imagined space of  lost countries and domestic belongings through colonial pedagogy of  knowledge and globalized imperial power. Hybrid images question the  problematic side of queer communities that uphold homonormativity  through whitewashing and internalized racism, and act to challenge forms  of oppression.

This is a solo show during the hit of COVID 19, 2020-2021, at John B. Aird Gallery, Toronto, Canada. 

The Cabinet of Queeriosities (2014) is a new body of work by Philippine-born, Toronto-based visual artist  Julius Poncelet Manapul. An Affiliate Event of WorldPride 2014 Toronto, this artistic intervention spans  three spaces of first floor of Studio 386 (386 Ontario Street, just south-east of the Church Wellesley Village)  and consists of installation, sculpture, video projection, digital art, and mixed media works which interrogate  the artist’s experiences of racialized queerness in the age of globalization and diaspora. Using visual  vocabularies culled from colonial and Indigenous cultures in the Philippines, abstracted gay pornography,  and found everyday objects, Manapul constructs stunning hybrid creations that belie first impressions and  challenge homonormative and heteronomative gazes.   Curated by artist and scholar Marissa Largo, this intervention includes an artist/curator talk that will  provide opportunities to consider the experiences of queers of colour and artistic production in the midst of  mainstream representations proliferated by the Internet and popular culture. The guided tour offers an  up-close and behind-the-scenes look at Manapul’s exquisite, highly crafted works of art.

"As an artist I construct hybrid representation of Gods and Idols by using pornography and images of half-naked (pin-up) white male bodies. I overlay these images with intricate designs and mixed representations of Gods from around the world but particularly focus on my own Catholic upbringing. In my art I place religious and regal imagery over each other. These images beg the questions: What is sacred and what is profane? What do we worship or what do we hold up as perfect? What is masculine? Who decides these things? And who has the power to do so?  My art is influenced by many factors: attitude of religious institutions towards gay culture, the superficiality of popular queer identity culture, race politics, gender performance, icons, sex and pornography. These issues have affected and transformed my life in my attempt to survive the conventions and control of religion, hetronormotivity and homonormonormtivity, and racism in western society.  “I explore the fragile material of gay magazines for my drawn collaged work,  transforming the images into appropriated childhood fantasy & homoerotic  forms while commenting on postcolonial issues. I trace my drawn images by  cutting and removing each traces of marked lines. The questons I ask and the  answers I seek are very much about what it means to be whole, liberated, self-  empowered and embodied as a gay Filipino man in a western, highly commercialized  Heteronormative & Homonormative society. At the same time failing to find my  own identity in a queer community that upholds the typical middle class, gay white  male as perfection of queer identity - homonormative.” -Julius Poncelet Manapul

Julius Poncelet Manapul's Art on Paper Installation that was shown at UTAC GALLERY 2013. Constructing Domestic spaces from the personal and imaginary, dealing with the themes on Domesticity, Sexuality, Gender and Race.

Julius Poncelet Manapul's earlier art appropriated iconography from structures of oppression in his personal and cultural history and presented pieces constructed from gay pornography with personal documents. These creations inverted the power dynamics present in his experience of religion, immigration, sexuality and gender. In this show, Julius' looks to the future and crafts a home for his and his husbands fictional child, Christian James. The gallery transforms into two rooms - a child's room and master bedroom - using the fragile materials of paper and Balikbayan cardboard box. Repeating images and patterns are used throughout the space including Julius' marriage certificate, a sign of the current normative queer family structure, and sexualized and ideal male figures. The exhibition displays the painful journey of identity construction and home-finding for a Queer Filipino man who is setting up a life in Canada. The home and occupants are transient suggestions of a future that can never be realized because of the Queer coupling. In Canada he can transform with possessions and can display his sexuality openly with his husband, but queer sex remains for pleasure without transforming into the possibility of the ultimate future - a shared child.