Is it over now? 

Or are we just in the eye of the typhoon?

In 2020, Russ Ligtas and Szu Ni Wen were selected for the Pier-2 Artist-in-Residence Program. After a long delay and waiting, Russ finally arrived in Szu-Ni’s hometown, the sister city of Cebu-Russ’s birthplace. What greeted us was a typhoon.

The restless past and future surfaced in the uprisings and the collapse of democracy, like reefs laid bare after the flood. And war, too, moved from the outside world into our hearts.

Within the intimacy of shared living and creation, chaos, regret, wounds, and unease poured down like a typhoon, as if we had returned to the place where we first set out—"Ocean: The Dark Side”.

Broken branches, fallen leaves, and freshly opened scars carried the faint scent of a world just after the typhoon.