Between Worlds: How artist Julius Manapul Made Art Their Home

Julius Manipoul is a queer migrant, filipinx, ilocano. Practicing artist and assistant professor at the Faculty of Art, ocad University. Manipoul's multidisciplinary art practice and research examines eternal displacement, complicated bicolonialism, sexual identity, diasporic bodies, global identity construction and Eurocentric Western hegemony. They attain their BFA at OCAD University and their Master's of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto. Their work has been presented at many galleries across the world. They've also exhibited for Toronto Nuit Blanche, toronto World Pride, inside Out, toronto LGBT Film Festival, toronto Queer Film Festival, outsider Fest, austin, and their work has been featured several times on the CBC. Julius, welcome to the Art-O-Log.

Hi, thank you for having me here.

Thanks for being here. Can you describe your art practice for me?

My art practice is multimedia, first and foremost because I like using different materials, found objects. It stems from sculptures. It stems from sculptures from 2D work, digital work, sculptures, installation. It deals with light, with sound, with performance, with stop motion, animation, experimental film. Basically, I try my best to capture varies of practices as I find it refreshes itself. As I find it refreshes itself, I find that it constantly refreshes my way of thinking, my way of making and my relationship towards the topic that I'm tackling, especially with the materials.

When did you know that you wanted to be an artist?

I didn't want to be an artist what I really. It's so odd. At a younger age I thought I wanted to be exactly like Martha Stewart I love cooking, I love posting, I love interior design, I love everything DIYs and then I thought I wanted to work in animation cartoon animation before but all of that shifted because I had so much different evolution of my career as well from interior design, I also had background in theater. I also had background in hair and makeup artists. So it feels, every single time I'm switching ways of making and still in the creative process I always fall back into things that are being created.

I like to work with visuals. I guess it's because, being born in the Philippines and immigrating to Canada in 1990 at nine years old, there was always that adjustment between languages for me. Sometimes I would think in Tagalog, sometimes I would think in English or vice versa. So it was always hard for me to articulate earlier on about ideas and I found that visual language is the most accessible language there is globally. You don't need words into it. People can still read and feel what you're trying to relate through the visuals that they're seeing. I still don't completely know what it is to be an artist, and so I guess it was just an organic way of understanding that I'm connected to it rather than, yeah, I think I'm going to be an artist. I was so interested about how an artwork could create conversation, and sometimes political conversations. That sometimes needs to be addressed.

Yeah, I would love to hear more about your most recent body of work, sila Siaco.

Sila Siaco, which translates they, them and me. So the title derived from remembering. Back in the Philippines we don't really have a word for he or she, we say them or they. So it was interesting to me to how do I link back towards that ideology, towards those languages, and link it towards what it is to be queer Filipino migrant in colonial or colonized land, right. So to me it was crucial to have a different conversation about queerness, but also about languages, about diasporic bodies. Diasporic means people who might immigrated to one country and tried to settle in. And Sosilasiakode them me represents this ideology of religious trifolds, right, the Father, son and the Holy Spirit as well. And I couldn't stop thinking about because most of my research was about the history of colonialism in the Philippines what made Filipino culture be so obsessive with whiteness, with assimilation, the time when Spain colonized the Philippines during the 1500s and how religion was a tool for colonization. And to me it was interesting because, being queer, I knew I was cool, I didn't have the word for it, but at a younger age, even at four or five, I knew something was different. So to me I was interested in that, because I guess I was interested to excavate my experiences as a child growing up we have to stay out of the sun, they say. They say you're going to get too dark, right? So there's always this hierarchical ideology.

Back home in the Philippines that I grew up with, I was so scared of going to Sunday Mass because there's this remnants of Spanish colonization when it comes to the Philippines landscape with the churches, and I was so scared I told my parents I would literally physically hide inside a closet at a younger age, sweating buckets because it's so hot in the Philippines. And then my parents couldn't find me. I missed Sunday mass again and I said I didn't want to go to that place with a dead man on a stick because it was this cathedral castle looking place. It didn't help that there was bats flying around and it was so frightening. That was my experience of church. So to me this is the perfect show, combining queer my queer experience growing up and religion and whitewashing into a show. So there was three mannequins in there, one representing they, which is the religion, the higher power, which is this large scale. Santo Niño, which was introduced by Spain, which translates to the baby saint, which was introduced by Spain, which translates to the baby saint, but in this aspect. It's all grown up a huge mannequin. So I was channeling almost like a drag show, like a drag Santo Nino. So the faces are all three sculptures. Their faces are voided from any referencing if it's a Filipino or a white person or a Spanish person. So the Santo Nino is inside the cathedral playing gay club music during the 90s to 2000,.

Where I grew up and I find it interesting that juxtaposition because I mean growing up my relationship with you know I mean growing up my relationship with you know the church and religion has always been quite distanced and it's only through later on that I realized I can still have belief, but without having to enter a certain structure or a podium or a place. Right, and then juxtapose that with the feeling that I got inside those gay clubs growing up in Toronto. It's quite a different landscape. It's full of segregation. There's also segregation and racism that happens within the queer communities, right? One can only just look at those queer dating apps that you can always see that's no Asian, please. I'm not into effeminate men, which is quite problematic, right? David L Eng, one theorist, wrote about it. It's called racial castration, the feminization of queer Asian North Americans. So to me it was interesting. The kind of treatment that I was getting in those clubs those spaces are supposed to be safe and accepting is so parallel to my experience growing up inside a church. So I thought wouldn't it be great to just marry those two things, because it's like that same feeling that I'm getting. It's unsettling, I feel like I want to belong, but I don't.

The viewers, when they enter that cathedral they see the Santo Nino, it's quite holy, and then there's butterflies all over the walls that shape like a cathedral arched windows, and then there's lights. Then there's this church music, classical music, and all of a sudden it stops and it turns into dance music and the music that oh, oh, and the music is curated. There was, I think there was, hathaway. What is Love? There's a few. There's Sonique, there's a few things that I grew up listening to or dancing to in the gay clubs with friends and a lot of the songs I realized when I was curating. It is all about the need for love and acceptance, or longing, or just not wanting to be alone. It's all about that acceptance, that love right, that euphoric belonging. So to me it was so fitting, all of those messages intertwined, and then A Space Gallery, which is in Toronto at 401 Richmond, has two rooms into it. So the first room is that cathedral. The second room is a larger space it has.

So in that installation you have the two statues, which is Sila and Aco. Which is the Sila represents the consistador, the Spanish. So I actually researched King Philip's armor and did a replica of his armor made out of the materials that I've been using, which is gay porn images and whitewashing products. I use a lot of gay porn images because it was interesting. It was the main. I remember that material came to me because I was broke, I had no money and I had me. My friends had a lot of magazines so I started cutting them out and I remember there's a few free magazines back then right called Fab Magazines that they used to have in Toronto. I don't think it's in publication now, but it allowed me to create repetition and to me it was important to use these images because these are the images that goes around in public, dictating what is valued and, trust me, it's all the cis masculine queer bodies of whiteness and if it's other color, they're exoticized, fetishized, objectified. I'm either hated or I'm fetishized.

So the two statues and one represents me, that represents what it is to be Filipino, filipina, filipinx. So the two sculptures are facing each other. It's almost like the colonized and the colonizer. And there's this red silk ribbon that comes out of one mouth that seven pigeons are carrying with their. The cloths are made out of my fingernails. I started collecting my fingernails for some reason because I thought it would be great to start utilizing them as repetitions, representing ideas of time passing, that indexicality, and this work is created by hand as well. So the red ribbon then attaches back to the mouth of the consistidor. That represents Spain. So I was telling people, this almost represents that kiss right, it's that kiss, but also that aggressive confrontation. It's to hate and to love simultaneously.

You can see how I created the paper cutouts as well, so you can see the unseen labor. There's also the balikbayan box images that evolves. Balik means to return, bayan means country. It's this balikbayan box a lot of Filipino knows and uses that leaves the Philippines, live in US or in Europe or in Canada, and then they put stuff in there, like a care package inside these boxes, and ship it back home. The gallery was black and I wanted to take advantage of that because I had experience in theater design, so I harnessed that. I think as artists, we have to wear different hats. We cannot just be wearing okay, I'm an artist now because it stops us from experimenting, from growing. If people are interested, I think a video tour of the space can be seen in my website as well.

I would love to hear more about the works on paper and how you create these ornate pieces out of salacious material a lot of the time, yeah, at the beginning I used to create them straight from the magazine.

I had tons of them, but now it's like most magazines are turning digital. I'm like, okay, my materials and my process has to evolve, so now I'm getting stuff online or the digital version. But it also allowed me to digitally create the work as well. So I would then have a chance to Photoshop things and create patterns that I don't have to ransack a free magazine, a queer stand, and so I can have 20 of these images and then I would print it out and then recut them again.

I love this idea. Even though that I'm also utilizing the digital aspect of art making, I always retrieve back and insert the tangibility of the process of making, like the, the cutting by hand, the sculpting by hand. I love this idea that I'm subverting the nude forms. At the beginning, what I was doing with the nude forms was I was just merely cutting negative spaces, so I was drawing on top of them and cutting out. So you have this negative space, so it becomes this kind of lace. But then later on, that's when I started to start combining them and sculpting with them as well. So the butterfly motifs really gravitated towards me, and that's when I started to realize that the patterns of the butterfly could be this guy's abs or pecs, or this muscles or this ligaments, and then their how shall I say? Their private members becomes the anatomy body of the butterfly. It started more in first solo show, which was also curated by Marissa Largo, and Marissa Largo curated Sila Sia Ako, but 10 years ago I worked with her as well in my first solo show. That's when I really showcased queer bodies is through the show entitled Cabinet of Curiosities, when I was researching the Cabinet of Curiosity, the Wunderkammer, in Europe, where you know nobleties and royalties when they colonized a land, when they colonized a country, they would usually bring back artifacts or taxidermies or items that they have no idea. It's like this notion of exoticization. So I wanted to switch that and turn that into his head. Who is being exoticized now? You're right, turning that dynamic of power. And to me the butterfly is so symbolic within what it is to be queer because it talks about transformation. Right, it transformed from a caterpillar to a chrysalis, to a butterfly. But also symbolically we have this word in Tagalog, called ladlad for the queer community, ladlad coming out of the closet to unfurl one's wings of David L Ng's racial castration. So here it was also talking about who is being castrated now. But also I was aware, constantly aware, of how I'm transforming the objects. So I also researched specific butterflies that are indigenous to the Philippines and then I would create those templates from it. I wanted to switch that gaze.

What I find is so interesting is that's how I came about with utilizing the pornography or the exotic images. It's not really about promoting those. Most people are like, oh they're so, the butterflies are so beautiful. And then they walk closer and they see it's made out of queer porn. And then it's fascinating how some viewers are like they love the image, they love the work from afar, they step up closer and all of a sudden a part of them also hate the work. I'm disgusted, you know, but it's fascinating how, when I encounter those reactions with my work, it's fascinating how the work never changed. It's people's perspective that changed and I think it's also a lesson within society that it depends where we're standing we are looking through this that we can completely understand that sometimes there are two series of stories or narratives. So I find that reaction fascinating and I think that's why I work with this material and subvert the material so it almost erases what it's made out of from, but at the same time, you know it's there.

What I started to do, that's when I started inserting the whitewashing product, but also creating text. You would see in my past work. It would say bakla or badeng, which means queer or faggot in Tagalog, and then rice queen or fudge hacker All of the slurs that hurt me. Queen or fudge hacker. Like all of the slurs that hurt me, they become decorative, so thus removing its own power as well. So it becomes just a facade.

I loved what you said about changing perspectives and, speaking of that, you're also an associate professor at OCAD, so I'd love to know more about how teaching has affected your process and what it's been like to be a practicing artist who also teaches people how to make art.

Yeah, I think it's important because sometimes, when we're creating, we are not one person in an island. We live amongst people who are thinkers as well, and there's also a collaborative ideology, because I don't see myself as giving them knowledge. I am there to enhance what they already have and possess and guide them. I am also learning from them as well. So every conversation, every process that we do also informs my next step, right, let's say it almost updates it. Right. For example, my work shifts and evolves so much that I was teaching stop motion animation in my class and what I like to do? I sometimes I like to join in the project, so I would give the project, but then I would also do it myself in class, because it's the way for them to show them how to execute the project, so I would create it. The stop motion Actually, one of the stop motion where my face gets covered by this red feathers of exotic images, but feathers from the rooster that I created was also presented and added to the last show, silasiyako, the big wall projection. So students can also see that whatever I was doing there could have a possibility of being part of what a bigger topic is. So to me, I'm also learning from the students' perspectives as well, because now we have so much diversity and there's also a different belief system, different culture. It's completely different from when it was 1990 when I came here. So to me it's refreshing to also know and understand different culture. It's completely different from when it was 1990 when I came here. So to me it's refreshing to also know and understand different culture and what had transpired them, what have formed them and informed their way of thinking and making as well.

But we're getting a lot more transcultural students who are mixed with two different cultures. So how do they navigate through this? Because I am not within that realm. I'm only transcultural through experience, right, living in one space and then nomadically moving to another space and being torn between. I call it the Pygmalion complex. My fair lady I was saying that remembers oh, we're going to take this gutter snipes and send her as a lady.

But to me it's fascinating how, when one is transformed between two experiences, it feels like you don't belong exactly to the new space. But now you are also estranged and you don't feel like you belong in the other space. And so I call it the Pygmalion Complex because it's just this nomadic existence. Where do I belong? If I don't belong in a specific base or country, art becomes the space where I could belong Right, becomes the space where I could belong right.

So I try to create that conversation with the students that either experience this kind of diasporic, nomadic duality, but also this duality between two cultures, right, as long as their concern is oh no, am I focusing more on one part of my culture and then ignoring one? Is there a certain balance? And I tell them yeah, it's good to have those balance too. You don't want to completely eradicate or erase certain aspect of you, because it's also homage to your ancestry, where you came from as well. So it's quite interesting and I love it. I'm sure that a lot of artists would say the same thing that they do learn from the students as much as vice versa as well. Yeah, Absolutely.

What have been some career highlights for you?

It would be the award that I just received last December of 2024, the Gallery Ontario Gallery Award, the GOG Award for the show of the year. It was a hard work right that show it manifested and I believe it was crunch time. I only had two months to complete the entire installation. But working again with Marissa as well was that highlight. It almost created a celebration after one decade to create this show and then get an award for it, for the hard work, it was amazing as well. I guess the biggest highlight was when I started working at OCAD. Highlight was when I started working at OCAD. That was 2019. I started working there, I started teaching there because it almost is like a loop, because I did my undergrad there and then I did my master's in U of T as well as the sexual diversity studies. But it was interesting to return back and becoming the professor and I always tell myself that I should always try to be the professor that I wish I had growing up. And to me, I always think about not ideas of teaching. To me, I always think about not ideas of teaching but ideas of conversation and starting dialogue towards what kind of artwork most people are passionate about. But I believe. Yeah, the highlights is being able to teach my show, my award shows. Another highlight would be being able to experience so many different things. One of the biggest highlights was being published in the diasporic Asian American academic journal. There's a publication coming up as well coming up this year for their anniversary as well, coming up this year for their anniversary and I'm writing a reflection towards the past show, silasia Ako. So that's being published soon.

What I'm most proud of is what I, during my hardest time. What I had to do in order to survive as an artist was. I remember no one wanted to show my work. This is after graduating my master's, and it was hard. It was hard. People were still skeptical Should we have this kind of artwork in the gallery space? Is it enough? And no one took me seriously. I guess it just it was too much of a shock. We're still comfortable between fantasy and landscape and abstraction, so I had to be strategic. So I basically answered every single artist call out there globally. I always tell my students this do not restrict yourself in Toronto, let alone just Canada. We have the whole world. If your work is not being received in the city you are in, I invest you to apply your work in other countries, and that was the miraculous thing, because who knew my first show ever would be in Berlin, a group show in Berlin, and then UK and also France. But Europeans, we've seen this stuff. Yes, of course, it's great work. So I think I needed that legitimation of my work. That was worth it and I was trying to say something with it until, in order for someone to take me seriously in within this landscape and also the solo, my first solo show, which I had Marissa Largo curated as well, 10 years ago, I had to fund that myself. We created a pop-up gallery. No one wanted to fund my show no one. At this point, my strategy was no one knew who I was, what my work was about.

2014, toronto hosted World Pride. So what I did? My first solo show, I tried to fund it myself by asking family members. No present for Christmas or birthday, it's just money. It's called the GoFundMe Julius Art Show. I saved up to $2,000 to create this solo show that we rented.

I barter with the space. If I fix the space up, can I have it for two weeks or so? So everything was a barter. So the power of advertising? Right? So we advertise it for World Pride. We advertise it for Nui Rose. So every connection towards the quiz because I knew who my audience was right. So, learning who your audience is important and, strategically, how do I market my work for those audience? And we get a lot of Americans and other people from different spaces during World Pride, especially the World Pride that Toronto hosted. So it was seen by so many people that it got reviewed.

That was my break. I had to make it that I tell students this do not just sit there and wait. If there's no space for you in the table, you make that space. Try your best to make that space. If you believe in your work and it will happen, it will manifest right. So I knew that that was the proudest moment of realization that I had was what I did. If I hadn't done all of those stuff, I wouldn't be where I am right now. But I knew I wanted to create work, artwork, not just artwork, but a political narrative. I wanted to create a narrative that was not there.

Growing up as a Filipino immigrant kid in Toronto, I didn't hear and see these stories. I wanted to create those landscapes and those stories, hopefully for the new generations. I would say it was a highlight to be able to be a hair and makeup artist at one point. It was a highlight doing interior design with my mom in the early 90s. It was a highlight taking acting classes and I was performing for a bit and also joining improv teams. Even in the 90s, I was working. I was in high school and I was working for the CBC art department because I was to go to kids. Oh, we need to. We need a couple of drawings in this kind of style. We need it tomorrow. So I was the go-to kids. Call Julius. He'll have it done in no time To me. Every experience in a creative outlet became a highlight for me as well.

That's amazing, Julius. Thank you so much for all of your wonderful insight and stories. This has been such an amazing conversation.

No, it's fun. I love the questions.

I do have a closing question. If you could give one piece of advice to someone looking to become an artist, what would you say?

My advice would be follow your instinct and there will be a lot of sometimes negative or adversity that's going to try to block you. Meryl Streep said always block those doors out, always focus and always believing in yourself, but also knowing that there will always be audience for you, for what you're doing. Because I think that's the fascinating thing about the world is for every one person with a certain belief and certain ideas. You have your clan, you have your community. So never, never stop.

I think sometimes so many people give up so easily this idea that it's only in Toronto or Ontario or Canada. There's a site that I always recommend students to. It's called transartistorg and they always show artist calls and residencies globally around the world. But there's a lot of sites that are like that. So you know how in real estate they say location.

What my brother always told me my brother used to work for DC Francis J Manipal. He's a comic book artist. What the main thing that he told me for his success as well, because he's also in the arts it is connection, connection, connection. It is so important and it's a skill set. Sometimes we ask ourselves why is there deadlines? It's so because in the real world there's a show or there's a project you have to deliver. If you're late one time, word gets around. This is a message to all artists Word goes around and it'll be like. It's almost like being blacklisted, right? It's no, this artist will not deliver on time. Be careful.

So I think it's just that consistency, right, the deadline, the consistency, the connection, knowing that every single connection counts. Go globally rather than thinking small but for sure, when all of those start to align, it's quite impossible not to succeed. You will always succeed. So I think it's just not giving up so easily as well. I always say to myself I will only give up because if I'm like, I guess, on the street, like begging or struggling for my life, right, I guess that's the thing Sometimes. Growing up in those dualities of two different countries, I've seen the worst of the worst sometimes and the best of the best, and to me it's okay. I will do my best to go out there. But that was the main thing that my brother told me that I still keep hold on me is can cherish your connection and appreciate them.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, julius, that's great advice.