From the artist:

"Our Islands 11°16'58.4"N 123°45'07.0"E" is a subaquatic procession of men in bastardized costumes from the religious to the iconic, from the Santo Niño to Philippine boxer Manny Pacquiao. They are fully submerged, in a trance, pushing themselves slowly against the sea and its shifting currents. At the head is a man dressed as the Santo Niño, and carrying a doppelgänger statue. The Santo Niño is the child Jesus, Patron of the islands. The man raises the miraculous statue repeatedly, slowly, leading the march.

This work is Atienza's submarine translation of her terrestrial Anito (2009 -), a film annually updated, combining the colorful Ati-atihan fiesta as entertainment with pressing social issues. The Ati-atihan was an ancient (pre-Austronesian migration, 10 000 BC) animistic festival of the Aetas, Christianized by colonial influence. In contemporary times, it is an annual procession of victories and disasters, dreams and protests; violence -- both natural and political-- is part of the spectacle.

Our Islands is the new Ati-atihan: the relationship between the sea, the islands, history, and social transfigurations. In this underwater Ati-atihan, compressor divers of the community join in the procession. Reenacting current events - Manny Pacquiao, the Papal visit, labor migration, the war on drugs, sea levels rising and marine life dying - participants assume other personas creating a slow and silent underwater protest. A protest against our global climate change and our local cultural decay. Inspired by their ancestors, they are powerful, god-like, mad.

Together with Atienza's community of fisherfolk with Madridejos, Bantayan Island, Our Islands is created as a reminder of the state of our planet. Facing these realities, we also deal with the loss and rediscovery of our own culture.

"In Equation of State, Martha Atienza examines the interaction between humans and the environment, documenting both their decline and resiliency. It is a tense relationship, expressed in the material and immaterial. In this new work, Atienza presents a survey of Bantayan Island’s coastline, highlighting climate change from a layered perspective. Referring to an equation that calculates the relationship between variables and a given set of physical conditions, Equation of State is an attempt to make sense of warming oceanic temperatures and subsequent rising sea levels.

Churches, bangka’s, basketball courts, sea walls and houses in various states of decay. All are observed as the camera slowly traverses the island group’s coast. Alongside this single channel video, is a 3-channel piece depicting fishermen as an allegory for resiliency as they struggle in rough waters. Surrounding the video works are nineteen mangrove plants whose movements are mechanically manipulated. An Arduino programmed mechanism pulls the plants in and out of water-filled pools, artificially mimicking tidal patterns that in their natural state would submerge the mangroves 30% of their lifespan. Known to thrive in warm waters, mangroves possess the capacity to store carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The Rhizophora stylosa, the most commonly planted mangrove species in the Philippines, illustrates private and public sector intervention of ecosystems.

Through the documentation of Bantayan Island’s coastal conditions, both human and environmental, and the recontextualizing of mangrove plants, Equation of State creates an experience which asks us to question environmental management and socio-economic development."[1]

[1] Text written by Jake Atienza