Rocky Cajigan

Rocky Cajigan is a Bontoc Igorot artist working in the contemporary contexts of Indigenous people from the Cordilleras region in the northern state of Luzon island in the Philippines. The artist’s practice, which includes found objects, assemblage, realist painting and archival-based installations, stems from a critical perspective on the cultural essentialism and minority politics in the country’s nationalistic instrumentalisation of Indigenous people. Coming from a female lineage of Igorot weavers, Cajigan’s works are deeply connected to his psycho-biography and personal memory which he links to the inherited legacies of colonialism, and cyclical neo-colonialism in the country’s continuing feudalisation. With a criticality towards new realities shaped by the current state of globalisation, there is also crudeness, nostalgia, and anger in Cajigan’s work; his unique image-making is often based in humour, irony, and queerness.