2012 / Two-channel video, video still and logs / Dimensions variable / Artist: Kiri Dalena

Washed Out is a video installation consisting of typhoon debris and footage shot by the artist in Mindanao in the aftermath of typhoon Sendong (Washi), which severely damaged Mindanao in 2011. Presented as Dalena’s sixth solo exhibition at Finale Art File, 2012, as part of the Endframe Video Art Festival, the artist projects on the gallery’s massive walls video footage of a flooded landscape, inundated in the wake of typhoon Sendong as it hit land on 17 Dec 2011. The images documented and shown are post-storm scenes depicting the typhoon’s damage consisting of hundreds of dead and missing persons, a desolate house emptied out by the flood, and logs floating adrift on still and silted waters. Strewn across the floor are remains of three massive balete, antipolo, and white lauan tree logs, among the many forms of debris washed out to sea. The sound of rivers gushing and waves breaking fills the dimly lit exhibition space, complementing the sense of place and space created by the visual juxtaposition of video footage and found objects.

Dalena produced Washed Out and another work Tungkung Langit (Toward the Sky), 2013, after revisiting her maternal hometown of Iligan, Northern Mindanao region, in Mar 2012. The city was left devastated by the typhoon after flash floods caused the Mandulog River to overflow. Thousands of displaced logs and uprooted trees from the city’s hinterland areas swept through the nearby communities and were cast out to Iligan Bay. The three logs, salvaged and stockpiled, were chopped into smaller pieces and transported to Manila for the exhibition. The installation is a transient work: the logs used are currently housed in the outdoor compound of the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau, Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife Center, Diliman, and much like in Tungkung Langit, serve as a setting for improvised play among children encountering the assembled timber remains.

A contribution to the tradition of Philippine installation art developing over four decades, Washed Out is distinguished for its appropriation of natural and found wooden materials salvaged from actual sites of tragedies. It contributes to artistic and critical discourse on the country’s history of natural disasters and the links between art, ecology, and society.