Julius Poncelet Manapul (they/them/ze) was born in Manila, Philippines in 1980 and immigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1990. They attained their BFA at OCAD University, their Master of Visual Studies at University of Toronto, and their Sexual Diversity Studies Research from University of Toronto. Their work had been presented at Koffler Gallery, University of Waterloo Gallery, Art Museum at the U of T, John B. Aird Gallery, A Space Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario. Also had exhibited for Toronto Nuit Blanche, Toronto World Pride, Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival, Toronto Queer Film Festival, Outsider Fest Austin Texas, had been featured several times on CBC Television Network, had been written in several academic articles, Journal of Asian American Studies, Vol.19 #3, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas Vol.1 & Vol.7, Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos and Canadian Imaginaries" to name a few, had hosted workshops and panel talks on queer Filipinx Futurities Diaspora & Decolonial Research, and had also shown works in London, Paris, Berlin, and US.
Julius is a queer migrant Filipinx artist, and a descendant of Maria Josefa Gabriela Carino de Silang, from the Carino family from their father’s mother side. Gabriela was an anti-colonial fighter during the 18th century Spanish rule over the Philippines, the first female leader of a Filipino movement for independence from Spain.
Manapul's multidisciplinary art practice and research examines eternal displacement, complicated by colonialism, sexual identity, diasporic bodies, global identity construction, and the Eurocentric Western hegemony. Focusing on the hybrid nature of Filipinx culture through post-colonial realities, and the gaze of queer identities as taxonomy. Excavating narratives specific to diaspora queer bodies and the loss of motherlands. Hybrid images question the problematic side of queer communities that uphold homonormativity & homonationalsm.
Excavating their experience of immigration and assimilation through cultural erasure. Their research looks at the narratives for many diasporic queer bodies that create an unattainable imagined space of lost countries and domestic belongings and globalized imperial power that begs the questions: What is sacred? What is worshiped or held up as perfect? What is masculine? Who decides? And who has the power?