Emmy Catedral was born in Butuan City, Philippines and raised in Butuan, Iloilo, Queens, and East Harlem, New York City. She is interested in collaborative acts of acentering, and subaltern gestures trolling the ways of knowing imposed and sustained by the global north. Through multi-form installation, performance, and texts, She has shown work under institutional personas The Explorers Club of Enrique de Malacca, The Amateur Astronomers Society of Voorhees (AASV), and as herself. She has performed collaboratively as Y2K (with Jocelyn Spaar and Carlos Rigau), and with the theoretical engineer and musician Howard Huang.

Work has been presented at Queens Museum, The New York Historical Society, LaMama Experimental Theater Club, Primetime, Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery and Department of Astronomy, Center for Book Arts, and Akron Art Museum. Readings and performances have been presented at Recess, 601 Artspace, Wendy’s Subway, The Segue Reading Series, Present Co. and other sites without names. Emmy DJs as Pers Lab.

Rooted in Cultural Anthropology, Asian-American Studies, Combined Media, and Sculpture, Emmy teaches Intercultural Practice in the Curatorial Practice MFA Program at Maryland Institute College of Art, and has been a visiting artist and guest lecturer for Image Text Ithaca, Bard College’s Experimental Humanities, and Asian Studies Programs, Tufts University, and CUNY Hunter College’s Department of Art & Art History. Since 2018, she has served on the Advisory Board of The Octavia Project, a free STEAM-based summer program for girls, trans, and nonbinary youth. Visit https://www.octaviaproject.org/about/ to learn more.

MFA, Sculpture, Hunter College, Department of Art and Art History (2012)
Fellow, Artist’s Institute (2012)