Cian Dayrit


Cian Dayrit is a Filipino multimedia artist.

Early life and education

Dayrit was born in 1989 in Metro Manila, Philippines. He graduated from the University of the Philippines Diliman's Fine Arts program in 2011.

Work

Dayrit's interdisciplinary practice explores colonialism and ethnography, archaeology, history, and mythology. He has exhibited at venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.
Dayrit's first solo exhibition, The Bla-Bla Archaeological Complex, opened at the Jorge B. Vargas Museum in 2013. The show examined the role that varying strategies of display and representation, such as archaeological and architectural structures, play in understanding history. The show explored issues of identity, heritage, and nationhood.
Dayrit's second and third solo exhibitions, Polycephalous and Spectacles of the Third World, continue his inquiry into, "origins and histories, and their representations in visual apparatuses, from the map, curiosity cabinet, and on to the museum."
In late 2017, Artnet announced that Dayrit would be featured in the 4th New Museum Triennial titled Songs for Sabotage at the New Museum in New York in 2018. The Triennial, co-curatored by Gary Carrion-Murayari and Alex Gartenfeld, explored, "interventions into cities, infrastructures, and the networks of everyday life, bringing together objects that could potentially create shared, or common, experiences."
Dayrit was featured in the 11th Berlin Biennale in Berlin in 2020.
His practice has been written in the by the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

The Bla-Bla Archaeological Complex, U.P. Vargas Museum, Quezon City, Philippines, 2013Polycephalous, Art Informal, San Juan City, Philippines, 2014

Group exhibitions

Omega, Tam-Awan Village Gallery, Baguio City, Philippines, 2013Applied Savagery, Now Gallery, Makati, Philippines, 2013The President’s Office, U.P. Vargas Museum, Quezon City, Philippines, 2013Paperviews 14: On Immanence, Project Space Pilipinas, Lucban, Quezon Province, Philippines, 2014Exposition, Lopez Memorial Museum, 2016Almost There, Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Quezon City, Philippines, 2017Shelf Life of Being, MONO8, Manila, Philippines, 2021

Awards