Markets of Resistance Book Launch with Angel Velasco Shaw and Sohrab Mohebbi

Join us on Thursday, July 10 at 7pm to celebrate the launch of Markets of Resistance. Angel Velasco Shaw, editor of the anthology, and curator Sohrab Mohebbi will come together in conversation.

About the Anthology
Markets of Resistance is a convergence of forty-four distinct voices. Academic, cultural, and visual essays; interviews; poetry; and an archival matrix of documents, images, and anecdotes woven into a dynamic tapestry address socially and cultural charged issues: re/self/decolonialization, cultural currency, the vibrant cultural heritage of the Cordillera in the Philippines and the Indigenous Peoples resistance to Spanish and American occupations, Baguio as a multicultural creative hub, radical pedagogy, and tourism.

It springs from the creative and investigative layers of the multidisciplinary “real-time” project, the original Markets of Resistance, a six-month experimental course in a variety of cultural immersions in Baguio and Cordillera Indigenous communities that culminated in a two-week series of activities held in the sprawling Baguio Public Market.

Manila-based undergraduate fine arts and communication arts students and faculty from Philippine Women’s University, and the Baguio-based AX(iS) Art Project collectively engaged in spoken word, performance art, film screenings, forums, workshops, and barter-trade, which are all inextricably linked to the works in the Markets of Resistance four-volume set (accompanied by a general introduction booklet). The interconnectivity of themes and topics within, across, and between volumes inspires alternative engagements with written and visual literacy—how we read, look, listen, and create critical meaning. We invite our readers into this multiverse to meander through these multidimensional materials as if wandering in-and-out of the Baguio Public Market labyrinth—a product of a menacing American colonial past where Cordillera art, heritage, and culture struggle to thrive.

Angel Velasco Shaw is a visual and media artist, curator, cultural organizer, and educator residing in Manila and New York. Her experimental documentaries have screened across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Casa Asia in Barcelona, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. She has curated contemporary art and film exhibitions in New York and the Philippines, and produced multidisciplinary projects in New York, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. Publications include Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of An Imperial Dream: 1899–1999, co-edited with Luis H. Francia (New York University Press, 2002), and the anthology Markets of Resistance (Baguio Kunst Book Publishing and Angel Velasco Shaw, 2025).

Sohrab Mohebbi is Director of SculptureCenter. Previously, he served as the Kathe and Jim Patrinos Curator of the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, 2022–23 and Curator at SculptureCenter, 2018–2020.