Subtitles or a love poem in plain language

Single-channel HD video, 8m 52s
2017/2019

A silent video of analog black and white images, Subtitles or a love poem in plain language is a meditation on the origins of creative acts. Each of its four-second frames contains a line and a photograph; neither illustrates the other. And so, with this mismatch, we are thrown into a dilemma: read the text or interpret the image (which says nothing of an attempt to draw connections, however unintended by the artist). Subtitles began as a response to Édouard Lévé’s celebrated memoir Autoportrait before transforming into an auto-fictional foray into the artist’s creative origins and personal histories. Cao delves, with poetic brevity, into what she calls ‘proto-practices’, or the unassuming creative acts performed in our youth: like the writing and photography of Cao’s childhood, neither of which have, until now, made it into her artistic practice. (Tendai John Mutambu)

Ctrl+P Journal of Contemporary Art
Issue No. 19, ed. Judy Freya Sibayan, Dec 2019, Manila

.giff Festival of New Cinema
Screening program by Los Otros
Warehouse Eight, Makati City
30 Nov 2019

2nd Hobiennale
Tomorrow with three stanzas : screening program by recess (.net.au)
Cinema One, 68 Murray Street, Hobart, Tasmania
16, 21 Nov 2019

On a daily basis
Group exhibition with screenings curated by State Projections
Helmut Galerie, Das Werk Wien, Vienna, Austria
10-31 Oct 2019

2019 Asian Artist Moving Image Platform
A Sense of the Earth : 2nd Curatorial Forum (with Los Otros)
Gyeonggi Sangsang Campus, Seoul, South Korea
8-9 Nov 2019

New Cinema Competition shortlist :
15th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival
The Maltings Theatre, Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK
19-22 Sept 2019

19th Seoul International NewMedia Festival
LOTTE Cinema, Hongik University, Seoul, South Korea
15-24 Aug 2019

Lost Frames XI: Pasinaya screening program
Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila
4 Feb 2018

Lost Frames VII: [REC] screening program
Catch272, Quezon City
13 Dec 2017

Parle pas français, merci group exhibition
Corredor Gallery, University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, Quezon City
8-25 Sept 2017
> Exhibited as part of installation (Single channel video on CRT TV, two sheets of glass, A3 laser print, personal archive in color prints, rug)