A World of Islands began as an exploration of the movement of indigenous knowledge, practices, materials and people, and historical and current fabrications of tropical utopia and dystopia. The research locates the ‘tropics’ as both a mythological and real place with shared colonial and ecological trauma but wildly divergent histories and cultures. As a series of projects, A World of Islands aims to unpick some of the clichés and relocate agency in the ‘tropical’ narrative.

This second, expanded exhibition situates these themes in the context of one of the largest diasporic tropical populations, dispersed in over 100 countries through forced, government-sanctioned and voluntary movement across oceans and seas. Here, A World of Islands brings together artistic perspectives and research on the Philippine archipelago, her climate, her people and their movement over seas and oceans.

Filipinos have played a disproportionately high role in worldwide maritime trade, currently making up more than 20% of the international maritime workforce. The realities of labor on these merchant vessels, in the hull of the ship, is explored in Joar Songcuya’s work. In a place where water makes up five times more space than land, sovereignty and fishing rights are deeply intertwined with politics. Alex Quicho’s speculative work imagines a future of an artificial island in the West Philippine Sea.

Nice Buenventura and Derek Tumala explore the omnipresence and threat of the sea and water when increasingly stronger storms bring more and more floods and storm surges. The experience of contemporary Filipino practices of ‘making home’ in places made inhospitable by earthquakes and typhoons is highlighted in a new work by Ronyel Compra. Memories, rituals, and practices of diasporic community-making are explored by Stephanie Comilang and Carol Anne McChrystal. Kim Sacay Chin unpicks the complexities of ‘coming home’ to an ancestral land that is both familiar and alien, revealing recurring themes of the diasporic condition.

This exhibition assembles artistic voices from the Philippine archipelago and the global Filipino diaspora in an attempt to foreground the complexities of being simultaneously interconnected and isolated. Together, the artists unpick conflicting themes of privilege and labour, relations and the effects of climate change on all of us. Their work and lived experience remind us that, as a world of islands, our futures are bound together.