RJ Fernandez’s practice is a study of temporal friction—the grinding together of ancestral time, colonial residue, and global industrial demand. Spanning photography, film, and co-creation— her work is rooted in personal history, heritage, and the geographic realities of the Philippines. Her practice is an act of making visible the labor and the lives that are frequently obscured by systemic power. 

Her artistic practice operates at the intersection of visual anthropology and material intervention, investigating the ways in which historical narratives are inscribed on both the landscape and the body, particularly within the context of the Philippines. By examining migration of forms, Fernandez unpicks how objects and subcultures move across borders, often acting as signifiers of economic dominance or cultural erasure.

My interest in the print as an object also informs Mapa Books, a publishing project with a focus on Philippine documentary photography.

———

Born 1979 in Manila. Lives in East Sussex—re-emerging artist after years of child rearing. 

Current and Upcoming

2026 Amici, Hastings

2027 Drawing Room, Manila

2026

Ruup & Form x Common Clay, Collect, Somerset House

2025

Taking Time, Flatland Projects, Bexhill

People in Pubs, Second Act Gallery, London

YCC Collective x Refugee Week, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill  

Residency Show,  Bexhill Art Weekend, Common Clay

2024

Nightingales, Benilde Open, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) Manila & De La Salle College of St. Benilde

Past

Drawing Room, Singapore

Format, Derby

Manila Contemporary

Art Fair Philippines 

Telenobela

Awards/Residencies

Benilde Open 2024

Coward Foundation Grant 2024

Grand Plan Fund 2024

Common Clay x Working Class Creatives Database Residency

Prix Pictet Nominee, 2013

Guest Lectures 

Photographers Gallery, London

SOAS University, London

Quai Branly, Paris

Norwich University of the Arts