Siyokoy dandy

Siyokoy Dandy is a submersive installation staging the first chapter of a merfolk memoir in a half-sunken world. Set in the buffeted boudoir of Telly Vavaude, our siyokoy dandy protagonist, one stumbles upon an encrusted excerpt of Vavaude’s personal luxuries: tide pool portholes, her taxidermied monkfish ex-boyfriend, a bespoke valet stand, an anglerfish wall sconce and other curios. Ceramic sculptures and vessels, lithographs and carved visions materially inform and inhabit the space as grotesque marginalia prophetically framing Telly’s preparation for the Whalefall Ball.

This exhibition centers on merfolk archetypes and the unruliness of the sea as a means for recontextualizing the intersections of the artist’s own queer Filipinx-Canadian identity. In this work, fiction is used as a survival tool for contemplation and affirmation sought within a rich vernacular of medieval art history, queer pop culture, and Filipino folklore. Siyokoy Dandy is an artistic assertion for the pursuit of queer joy, transformation and critical delirium.¹

This written thesis is an accompanying text expanding on the world influencing the show. A short story introduction, a playscript with a song, an interview with a fictional character, and a research essay comprises the body of this thesis.

1 A siyokoy is a Filipino mythological creature derived from the Hokkien “shui gui” which roughly translates to “water ghost”. Popularised as resembling Milicent Patrick’s Gill-man from Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), this apparition is rumoured to drown villagers and cause shipwrecks in coastal towns. The term siyokoy is also used in Filipino linguistics to describe incorrect hybrid words proliferated by the bourgeoisie since 1976 according to National Poet, Virgilio Amarillo. Siyokoy Dandy indicates the knottical mixture of siyokoy and dandyism.