MUSES OF BOHOVEE                                                                                                                   

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In this project, I use photography as a starting point for small-scale pastel portraits that explore my desire and attraction to male beauty as a Filipino queer artist. These works engage with the idea of the muse—not as passive inspiration, but as a constructed figure within systems of gaze, fantasy, and representation shaped by BOHOVEE.

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My process follows an informal form of field research, in which I encounter and approach potential models in everyday environments—places where I live, travel, or work artistically. These individuals are often non-professional models, including construction workers, delivery riders, domestic workers, and young men I meet in urban and provincial contexts across the Philippines. At times, I also collaborate with artists, musicians, photographers, and people I encounter locally or abroad.

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Approaching strangers is a central and fragile part of the work. I introduce the project in simple terms and show existing portraits as references. These images often open a space for conversation and trust. I remain attentive to consent, response, and body language throughout the encounter. A modest fee or a small artwork is offered in exchange. These situations become performative negotiations—somewhere between documentation, encounter, and lived interaction.

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This process extends my performance practice into everyday life, where questions of gaze, power, and authorship are activated in real time. The works—photographs, pastel portraits, and assembled objects such as printed underwear—are presented as installations resembling a personal archive or altar. Within this structure, BOHOVEE operates as a ritual framework that reshapes desire, image-making, and representation.

The project culminates in performative video works in which BOHOVEE appears in full persona, using spoken chants, musical fragments, and staged gestures. These videos weave together documentation from encounters and behind-the-scenes material, blurring the line between performance, observation, and reconstruction.

The visual language of the work is shaped by 1990s Filipino queer visual culture, including independent cinema and print media, as well as contemporary digital platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter). These sources form a constant circulation of erotic and stylized imagery, which I rework into a personal visual system grounded in lived encounters. Through BOHOVEE’s “Bohoveentures,” I build an ongoing archive of desire rooted in specific social and geographical contexts.

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Ultimately, the project reflects on desire, the ethics of looking, and the instability of the image in contemporary visual culture.