Jon Cuyson will represent the Philippines at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026 with an installation titled "Sea of Love / Dagat ng Pag-ibig." The work combines painting, sculpture, sound, and moving image into a spatial environment inspired by the logic of the sea. It features fragmented painting panels, metal hardware, cast resin mussels, and marine debris, alongside a film narrated from the perspective of mussels in Cavite City. Central to the piece is a queer Filipino time-traveling seafarer named Kerel, whose story unfolds across Cuyson's Kerel Trilogy films. The pavilion, located in the Arsenale, is curated by Mara Gladstone.
Cuyson's project is grounded in what he calls "mussel thinking," a way of understanding the world through filtration, clustering, and sedimentation. The work engages with the Biennale's theme "In Minor Keys" by focusing on quiet, dispersed, and overlooked narratives, particularly those of Filipino seafarers and queer kinship. This representation matters because it brings attention to submerged histories of labor, ecology, and care, challenging dominant narratives through abstraction and fragmentation. The Venice Biennale remains a significant platform for cultural diplomacy and global art circulation, and Cuyson's pavilion offers a nuanced perspective on identity, migration, and ecological interconnectedness.