Mark Salvatus

New Society, 2014
Found Photographs, Torn Page (Gina Lollobrigidia: The PHILIPPINES, 1976, Samira, Liechtenstein), vintage frame, variable dimensions

Working across media and disciplines with the debris of everyday life and politics, Mark Salvatus’s Salvage Projects juxtapose found objects with other materials through photography and video in installations that explore the national past and its fragments. A work that complicates the relationship between history and fiction, New Society collages and critiques a crassly detached 1975 coffee table book commissioned by Imelda Marcos to promote tourism in the Philippines under a dictatorship.
Mark Salvatus is an intermedia artist at the forefront of critical discourse on the subject of urbanization and the socio-economic underpinnings that are made manifest in densely-populated areas. The urban landscape serves as both repository and stage for Salvatus’ works that deal with familiar objects, chance encounters, and everyday politics.