“Performance is where I can collapse categories — gender, nation, even time — to imagine a different cosmology.”—Joshua Serafin

Born in Bacolod, Philippines, Joshua Serafin has forged a path as a multidisciplinary artist whose practice moves fluidly between dance, performance, visual art, film, and installation. Coming from a working-class family with little access to the arts, Serafin discovered creativity early through drawing competitions and festival performances, eventually training at the Philippine High School for the Arts before pursuing dance and fine arts studies in Hong Kong and Brussels.

Now based in Brussels, Serafin has become known internationally for works that center queer and diasporic experiences while reimagining myth, identity, and embodiment. Their trilogy Cosmological Gangbang—which includes Timawo, Void, and Pearls—has been staged globally, blending speculative futures with precolonial cosmologies to propose new ways of inhabiting the body beyond binaries.

This interview is part of a CNTRFLD.ART series of conversations with Filipino artists, facilitated by Trickie Lopa, founder of Art Fair Philippines. In dialogue, Serafin reflects on their roots in the Philippines, their navigation of diasporic life, and their interest in nightlife, queerness, and spirituality as fertile grounds for transformation. Speaking with CNTRFLD, they share how their journey across continents continues to shape their evolving practice—one that remains deeply connected to questions of belonging, ancestry, and the radical possibilities of performance.

CNTRFLD. You grew up in Bacolod and later trained at the Philippine High School for the Arts before moving abroad—how did your early life and education in the Philippines shape your artistic voice, particularly your focus on performance and identity?

JS. I come from a working-class family in Bacolod. We didn’t have access to the arts, but I was always a very active child—interested in drawing and extracurricular activities. I got into a regional drawing competition, then later joined a school performance for the MassKara Festival, which became my first experience with dance.

I auditioned for the Philippine High School for the Arts as a visual artist but got accepted instead into theatre. While majoring in theatre, I trained in ballet every summer, eventually becoming a ballet scholar with Ballet Philippines. I mixed theatre, ballet, visual arts—everything I could.

After high school, I realised I didn’t want to work with text anymore and shifted to dance, studying briefly in Hong Kong, then auditioning for P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, where I trained intensively. Later, I took up Fine Arts at KASK and earned both a BA and MA, exploring filmmaking, scenography, drawing, and writing.

My practice now combines everything—movement, visual art, theory—and it's all shaped by my early experience of resourcefulness and navigating art education through scholarships. I learned to create from scarcity, which deeply informs how I make work today.

CNTRFLD. You’ve lived and worked in multiple cultural contexts—Hong Kong, Belgium, and across Europe. What made Brussels your chosen base, and how does that city’s environment support or influence your creative process?

JS. I studied here for six years, so I built a strong community. There are systems in place—funding, social security, institutional support—that allow artists like me to live and create.

As someone with a Filipino passport, mobility is limited, so staying here also became practical. But more than that, I feel mentally free here. I can imagine and make work without censorship or cultural conservatism. I’m also not bound by the codes of this place because I wasn’t born here—I don’t fully internalize its norms, which gives me space to just be.

CNTRFLD. As someone navigating diasporic life, how does your experience of migration and dislocation inform the narratives and aesthetic languages in your work?

JS. Even though I live in Europe, I return to the Philippines at least once or twice a year. I stay connected—with the people, the politics, and the struggles. My works are often inspired by these ongoing relationships.

Diaspora means I’m both here and not here, there and not there. I created an entire trilogy (Cosmological Gangbang) around that tension. My body is always in a state of displacement, adapting constantly.

With VOID, I imagined a being that can exist beyond gender, identity, or cultural codes—a body designed to navigate many worlds. That comes from my lived experience as a migrant and queer person. The issues I engage with—colonialism, systemic violence—aren’t just Philippine problems. They’re global, and my work reflects that.

CNTRFLD. Your performances often embody fluid, otherworldly figures that exist beyond binaries. How do you define or approach the concept of identity in your work—particularly in relation to queerness, spirituality, and indigeneity?

JS. I’m not interested in binary thinking. It limits how we understand bodies, identities, and even spirituality. My work tries to propose something else—a fluid state of becoming. It’s not about being one thing or another, but being many things at once, or even something undefinable.

CNTRFLD. In projects like Void and Cosmological Gangbang, you draw from pre-colonial Philippine mythologies and reimagine alternate futures. How do you navigate the tension between reclaiming the past and envisioning speculative futures in your practice?

JS. I look to the past not to repeat it, but to imagine what could’ve been if we weren’t colonised—what systems or cosmologies might have developed on our own terms.

My speculative worlds are acts of reclamation. In these works, I imagine bodies governed not by binary systems, but by spirit, queerness, and myth. These aren’t just fantasy—they’re proposals for the kind of world I want to live in.

CNTRFLD. Having trained in Asia and Europe, what differences have you observed between the Philippines and other countries in terms of how performance and experimental art are supported and received? What do you think is needed to foster a stronger support system for performance artists in Southeast Asia?

JS. Speaking from my experience in the Philippines, the main gap is infrastructure—especially funding. In Europe, there are clear systems and platforms that support artists, including experimental work. In the Philippines, artists often don’t have the financial means or institutional support to make a living from their practice.

What we need are sustainable structures—public and private funding, government support, and platforms for all kinds of art. It’s not just about exposure, but about creating a liveable system for artists beyond commercial galleries, especially for multidisciplinary practices that don't fit neatly into a market model.

CNTRFLD. Your work traverses multiple disciplines—dance, installation, visual art, film. How do you decide which medium or form a concept should take, and how do collaboration and production networks influence these decisions?

JS. It always starts with a feeling, vision, or dream—then I draw. Those drawings can become installations, films, or performances. The medium depends on what the work needs and where it will be shown. Sometimes a piece starts as a film and becomes a performance, or vice versa.

Context matters too—some commissions ask for film, others for installation. I think about where the audience is and how best to communicate with them.

As for collaboration, I choose people not just for their skills but for their values and energy. It’s about creating a space where everyone feels heard and safe. In Pearls, for example, it was important that collaborators felt cared for—we were building a world together, and I needed everyone to feel part of it.

CNTRFLD. What current projects are you working on—such as Pearls, the final part of your trilogy—and what themes or ideas are emerging in this next chapter of your work?

JS. After completing Cosmological Gangbangwith Timawo, Void, and Pearls, I’m starting a new project called Lost Ancestors. It’s rooted in personal research—I recently found my great-great-grandfather’s birth certificate, showing he was Japanese. I’ll be going to Japan to trace his lineage.

This project explores lost ancestry—through war, genocide, or nature—and what it means to lose connection to one’s roots. It also reflects on what we’re losing now: not just lives, but feelings, sensitivity, and our sense of humanity. Lost Ancestors will unfold over the next few years, culminating in a large-scale work combining performance, film, design, and installation.

CNTRFLD. Much of your work engages nightlife, queer subcultures, and altered states—often with elements of ritual and transformation. What draws you to these liminal spaces, and what do you hope audiences take away from encountering them?

JS. Nightlife and queer spaces have been part of my lived experience—places where people gather, move, feel, and sense each other. In those dark rooms and dancefloors, there's a special energy—desire, curiosity, even healing.

These spaces let us be anonymous, fluid, transformative. They allow us to explore identities without labels. I often wonder, “What spirit watches over these spaces?” That’s why I create avatars—deities of subcultures that honour and protect these liminal, sacred zones. For me, it’s a kind of spiritual design.

CNTRFLD. You’ve carved a distinctive path as an internationally touring artist working outside traditional commercial systems. What advice would you offer to younger artists—especially queer and diasporic creatives—looking to navigate performance, identity, and global visibility on their own terms?

JS. I don’t think of myself as having “made it,” but I’d say: stay true to your work and your truth. Know who you are, why you do what you do, and who it’s for. Don’t let outside opinions distort that. When the work comes from an honest place, it resonates—more deeply and more lastingly than anything built for approval or trend.

About the artist.

Joshua Serafin is a multi-disciplinary artist who combines dance, performance, visual arts, and choreography. Born in the Philippines, they are currently based in Brussels. They are a house artist of Viernulvier for the season 2023-2027.  Having graduated from the Philippine High School for the Arts where they majored in Theatre Arts, they moved on to major in contemporary dance at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Joshua graduated from P.A.R.T.S. later on in 2019, and gained their Bachelors in Performance from KASK in 2021 where they also completed their Master’s in Fine Arts in Visual Arts in 2022 with great distinction. Their Master’s work additionally earned them the Horliet-Dapsens Prij 2022,. They premiered their first solo work “Miss” in VIERNULVIER. They have collaborated with multiple artists in Asia and Europe ranging from performance to visual arts. Their work has been shown internationally, most notably in,  Esplanade, Singapore, BIT Teatergarasjen in Norway, Anti Festival in Finland , Night Shift in Ostend, Beursschouwburg in Brussels, Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, Haus Der Kulturen der Welt HKW, HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, Tono Festival in Mexico, Amant in New York. They participated in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia curated by Adriano Pedrosa. Their work VOID video installation, VOID live performance and PEARLS were part of “Foreigners Everywhere”.  They received multiple nominations as well as awards such as: Anti Festival Live Arts Prize (2023).  Forbes list 30 under 30 Asia (2024). They were nominated for the Circa Art Prize (2024) and One of the recipient of 13th Artist award by the Cultural Center of the Philippines (2024), and Artnews top 12 defining artworks in (2024)
Exploring themes of transmigration and queer politics, Joshua centers their practice on Otherness, aiming to translate ideas of alterity and otherworldly narratives into embodied performance and forms of speculation. Their series “Cosmological Gangbang” is the result of their most recent artistic research, having unfolded in several iterations across different media, namely: Timawo, Creation Paradigm, VOID, and PEARLS, for which they are currently touring.

Serafin’s artistic process is an intense sociological exorcism of Filipino identity about global ideologies, and contemporary phenomena, unpacking the historical violence of its feudal contemporary society and its dehumanizing normality. Enfolding these sites of creation into queer + trans methodologies intuited from within tropical myth but also inspired by the dreamwork of a nonbinary cosmopolis populated by figures emancipated from colonial gender and embodied by turns in diverse states of solemnity and play. Joshua’s globally acclaimed performance is committed to dwelling within interstitial spaces, a refusal to participate in dimorphic structures so they can craft an idiom where they can speak from the said in-betweenness.

With thanks to Trickie Lopa for facilitating this interview.