About my own writings ...

-

While Amiel Roldan is primarily known as a visual artist, his interdisciplinary approach extends beyond the canvas. Let's explore more about his writing endeavors:  




Art and Writing : 

• Amiel Roldan  is not only a painter and printmaker but also an independent curator . His artistic practice involves a wide range of media, including research , photography , and writing . 
   
• As a curator, he has been involved with institutions such as the Jorge B. Vargas Museum , Kulay Diwa Gallery , and the Hiraya Gallery .   

• Online Presence :

• You can find more about his work and insights on his blog , where he shares thoughts, experiences, and updates related to his artistic journey. 

• Additionally, you can explore his Facebook page , where he engages with the art community and shares glimpses of his creative process. 

• Continuing Exploration :

• Roldan's writing likely reflects his exploration of themes similar to those found in his visual art: politics, religion, and the human condition . Expect thought-provoking content that delves into dichotomies and the complexities of life.   


Whether through brushstrokes or words, Amiel Roldan continues to contribute meaningfully to the art world.










**The Epistemic Unfolding of Cultural Labor: A Reflexive Examination of Unseen Industry in the Art World**  


*Abstract*  

This essay undertakes a rigorous dialectical inquiry into the epistemological dimensions of cultural labor, foregrounding the indispensable contributions of museum staff, curators, archivists, and art handlers within the broader infrastructure of aesthetic production. While the conventional paradigms of artistic value have predominantly centered on the creative act, this analysis interrogates the ontological erasure of cultural workers by situating their labor within a socio-historical matrix of institutional sustainability.  


*Introduction*  

Within the discursive landscape of contemporary art discourse, the notion of artistic genius is often valorized to the detriment of the systemic architectures that scaffold cultural production. The premise of this essay is that cultural workers, whose labor remains obscured beneath the veneer of institutional spectacle, constitute a vital epistemic stratum warranting deeper scrutiny. By synthesizing labor theory, critical aesthetics, and archival studies, this work recontextualizes the contributions of cultural workers and argues for their re-inscription within the visual and theoretical economies of art practice.  


*Labor and Erasure: The Mechanisms of Cultural Production*  

The invisibility of cultural workers is not an incidental oversight but rather an epistemic condition sustained by hegemonic ideologies that privilege creative labor over infrastructural support. Pierre Bourdieu’s theorization of cultural capital elucidates how prestige within the art world is disproportionately allocated to the artist-as-producer while diminishing the role of those who maintain, install, and contextualize artistic works. Institutional gatekeeping, mediated through museum hierarchies, perpetuates this inequity, effectively rendering cultural workers as spectral figures in the semiotics of art history.  


*Museum Labor as Aesthetic Praxis*  

Extending Jacques Rancière’s conceptualization of the distribution of the sensible, this section posits that museum labor embodies an aesthetic praxis in itself—a material engagement with the ontology of artistic preservation. The handling of artworks, conservation techniques, exhibition curation, and pedagogical facilitation collectively signify an intricate choreography and physical exertion. Yet, these modalities of labor remain marginalized within aesthetic discourse, relegated to the periphery of cultural valuation.  An exemption is when an artist is also a cultural worker. 


*Toward a Visual and Theoretical Reclamation*  

A critical imperative emerges: the recuperation of cultural workers within artistic representation. This section theorizes a radical praxis wherein cultural workers are not merely acknowledged but actively inscribed into the semiotic lexicon of artistic visibility. Through performative interventions, museum installations, and critical curatorial strategies, the labor of art handlers, curators, and conservators must be foregrounded as indispensable constituents of artistic production rather than auxiliary facilitators.  


*Conclusion*  

The erasure of cultural workers within the art ecosystem reflects broader structural exclusions within institutional paradigms. By situating cultural labor within an epistemic framework that acknowledges its indispensability, this essay challenges normative boundaries of artistic authorship. As the art world contends with postcolonial critiques and labor ethics, a reconceptualization of cultural work is not merely desirable—it is necessary for the equitable redistribution of artistic value and recognition.  



--- 

This essay functions both as an academic interrogation and a conceptual springboard for Amiel Roldan's painting series on cultural workers only reflection but direct engagement with the visual and curatorial modalities that can make this unseen labor explicitly visible. 

Amiel Gerald Roldan
May 26, 2025


please comment and tag if you like my compilations.

amiel_roldan@outlook.com
amielgeraldroldan@gmail.com


If you like my concept research, writing explorations,
and/or simple writings please support me by sending
me a coffee treat http://paypal.me/AmielGeraldRoldan




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ernest Concepcion

-
Image
Grip of Salvation I, II, III A Study Beyond Conceptualism for Ernest Concepcion's Art About When Filipino-American Ernest Concepcion started his works on these transmedia paintings, he started with large square formatted works as studies. He wasn't able to continue the series for an international exhibit a few years back but he was nonchalant about it and expressed more gratitude to our academic training, flexibility, discipline with ideas and concepts from a common art professor at the University. The thrust of creating your ideas through several repetitions, deconstructions, medial studies, and several workloads of hundreds of preliminaries might have brought us shared insights with the artists we really respect.  Gaining understanding & choosing to work the formatted canvas as his large palette offered more challenges to us albeit in a simple way.  For a time, Ernest Concepcion moved to Brooklyn, New York as a young emerging artist. I met him there again in 2003 while o...
Read more

Juanito Torres

-
Image
History of the World   Immortality & the Spiral Ascent of One Juanito Torres About I met the painter and sculptor Juanito Torres in the mid 1990's, a dynamic figurative artist student then. Marveling at his outspoken personality, talent in figurations, observant singularity, unique character, and pragmatic existentialism.  And as a fellow artist student in daily struggle, we sought not only those in the academic institutions but the immensity and proportion of the applied in the real. We went to most leading galleries around and immersed ourselves in the aesthetics and patriotic debates among the norm in the Philippine art scene and the contrasting conceptual half of dissenting norms. He had a wider introduction than most to materials and theories in art early on as he belongs to the elite Makiling HS Visual Arts prior to his taking on a more formal painting course at the University. This earned him the foundation to be independent from any chartered route. Making his own ...
Read more

ILOMOCA presents Cultural Workers: Not Creative?

-
Image
Artist Statement / Reflective Essay Amiel Gerald Roldan Cultural Workers: Not Creative? – ILOMOCA, May 16, 2025 For decades, I have committed myself to the practice of painting and artmaking—drawn to it not solely for expression, but for the quiet sustenance it gives. However, prolonged exposure to the structures, personalities, and politics behind the art world has, at times, left me jaded and distracted. I hold myself accountable for these distractions, but they were also lessons. The peripheries of art—documentation, marketing, directorship, curation, administration, facilitation, and pedagogy—have deeply informed my growth. In learning the demands of these roles, I found a sense of order and grounding amidst the turbulence. A pivotal moment in my development was the opportunity granted by the Asian Cultural Council in 2003–2004, which allowed me to work in the United States. That period served as a critical foundation for my growth as a printmaker, painter, and curator. Over the ye...
Read more