About
I'm Dar San Agustin, an artist from Manila, Philippines, currently based in California while finishing my MFA at CalArts. My practice spans photography, installation, sculpture, performance, and bookmaking. I often begin with something personal—a surgery, a scar, a joke, a job—and expand outward into shared stories shaped by labor, displacement, memory, and survival.
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I work with cheap, accessible, or discarded materials: things like salt, candy, thrifted toys, oyster shells, and textiles from the Philippines. I often bring materials with me across borders, not just for cost, but because that act mirrors a deeper logic: how value is assigned, how labor is exported, and how people carry what they can to endure. Even the most intimate choices in my life have followed this kind of practical, survival-based thinking. That mindset runs through the work I make.
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Some of my recent projects include FB Marketplace (Flesh & Blood), a reimagined sari-sari store critiquing bodily commodification through a distorted retail setup, and Anting-Anting, a solo show merging folklore with personal health experiences. I've also created a salt-printed photo series documenting salt farming in Pangasinan, reflecting on the labor and care behind essential resources.
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I see my practice as ongoing research into how survival is shaped by forces beyond our control—and how people, especially those made invisible or expendable, adapt, resist, and hold on. Lately, I have been dabbling into making my own photo books and zines. I'm currently working on a book version of my salt farming series, exploring labor, climate, and preservation through image and poetic text. At the same time, I'm working on this new project called Un/Familiar—a visual project and zine series about places that feel both known and strange. It explores what it means to live in the in-between: to be somewhere physically but not feel fully seen, to move through landscapes that echo home but don't recognize you back. It’s a quiet reflection on displacement, memory, and emotional endurance—how presence doesn't always mean belonging.
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At its core, my work is about how people persist—how we hold things together even when we’re falling apart. I hope to make spaces that are both tender and sharp, where stories can linger, shift, or even heal.
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What does it cost to survive?
How do people adapt when they’re treated as disposable?
What do we carry, and what do we leave behind?
Who decides what has value?
What lives forever?
