Recipient of the 7th Objectifs Documentary Award
Open Category
The Forest Listens, Their Spirits Cry
Featuring works by Gab Mejia (The Philippines)
Curated by Goh Sze Ying
Revered as healers, warriors, and teachers, the Baylans of the Talaandig-Manobo have long been guardians of the sacred forests of Mount Kaluntungan in the southern Philippine province of Bukidnon, threatened by an encroaching industrial pace since the Spanish and American colonial period. For the Baylans, the forest is a sacred site—a portal, a threshold. Nature and spirit abide in the Talaandig-Manobo narrative.
Gab Mejia pays homage to this verdant landscape and its people by directing our attention to the queer kinship of two central figures: a head spiritual leader Datu Arayan, and a Baylan initiate and youth leader Krystahl Guina. A new generation of Baylans, they are also members of the Kulahi Pangantucan Performing Arts Group—storytellers, performers, protectors of indigenous heritage. Mejia’s dreamlike portraits animate Datu and Krystal’s deep, unspoken spiritual connection with their land, home, and family amidst the quiet domesticity of their daily rhythms.
The Forest Listens, Their Spirits Cry speaks of a desire to pollinate a dream of a future belonging otherwise.
About the Artist
Gab Mejia (he/they) is a queer Filipino photographer, multidisciplinary artist, and environmental engineer. Born and raised in the Philippine archipelago, his work unveils the threads of the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, ancestral knowledge, cosmologies, and cultural interconnections to confront our socio-political and ecological crises.
Mejia is a National Geographic Explorer, Climate Pledge Global Storyteller, Fellow in the International League of Conservation Photographers and 2019 Jackson Wild Media Lab Fellow. His work has appeared in National Geographic, BBC, CNN, ArtPartner, Vogue, United Nations, Manila Times, Fotografiska Shanghai, Photo London and TEDx talks amongst other publications and platforms. He is a Board of Trustee for the World Wide Fund for Nature Philippines.
About the Curator
Goh Sze Ying is Curator at National Gallery Singapore. At the Gallery, she contributes to the UOB Southeast Asia Gallery long-term display, Between Declarations and Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia since the 19th century. More recently, she worked on exhibitions including Living Pictures: Photography in Southeast Asia (2022), Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia (2022), and Something New Must Turn Up (2020). In 2019, she co-curated the sixth edition of the Singapore Biennale, Every Step in the Right Direction.