Derek Tumala shares his perspective on the artist&rsquo;s role in environmental work.

PHOTOGRAPHY Koji Arboleda
STYLING AND CREATIVE DIRECTION Paolo Chua

Each time a marine animal is found washed up ashore, local fishermen (and people on the internet) spin legends, seeing it as a doomsday signal in the shape of an unrecognizable monster. It happened in 2019, when a beached whale was found in Compostella Valley with a stomach full of shopping bags and rice sacks. Once again in 2020 at Surigao del Sur, and most recently, last April in Butuan City.
These events inspired Derek Tumala&rsquo;s &ldquo;A Hairy Blob Washed Ashore, Doomsday is Coming&rdquo; (2023), where he conjures the memory of those whale carcasses in a paper mache sculpture, emphasizing how Filipinos see the beached whale as an indicator for the condition of our waters and also as a dark omen causing anxiety for the future.
As an artist whose work is foundationally built on scientific data, Derek Tumala has been fascinated by how science and superstition intersect. &ldquo;The Philippines has a very superstitious culture. We create our own myths and history, [and I] try to question or kind of put that thinking into [my art] because I've been working with scientific information which we all know is a colonial legacy as well,&rdquo; he says.

Tumala sees that the everyday Filipino is disinterested or disconnected with climate concerns because in the past decades, the country has only gotten used to weathering the strongest typhoons while seeing little improvements in infrastructure to better prepare for the next storms. While this disconnection can be difficult to contend with in terms of the climate work, he sees it as a prompt to decolonialize the conversation. Our culture is driven by strong emotions, such as fear, which is why he is interested in more commanding ways of creating art.
His residency with the Manila Observatory and Render Climate has let him see the reality of our situation through the lens of rigid data. The numbers might be bleak, but he believes that the artist&rsquo;s job is to imagine new futures from what he knows in the present. Currently, his work for the Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts in Slovenia expands on &ldquo;A Warm Orange Colored Liquid&rdquo; (2024), a six-meter-tall solar powered globe that he originally made for Art Fair Philippines.
&ldquo;When you&rsquo;re an artist, you try to examine life. I feel like I&rsquo;m researching the whole time and it&rsquo;s translated to the work that I do,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;And so, it&rsquo;s about seeing things the other way around. There&rsquo;s too much awareness and anxiety that we can&rsquo;t really process well. But there is still a glimmer of hope.&rdquo;

MAKE-UP Luis Bu&ntilde;ag
HAIR Cloud Olid
LIGHTING DIRECTOR Joey Alvero

Dreaming of Better Futures: Derek Tumala

L'OFFICIEL HOMMES PHILIPPINES JUNE 2025 - Cole Micek ₱600

L'OFFICIEL PHILIPPINES JUNE/JULY 2025 - Intimate Encounters ₱600

Dreaming of Better Futures: Derek Tumala

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