About

I'm Dar San Agustin, an interdisciplinary artist from Manila, Philippines, currently based in Los Angeles, California. I work with photography, installation, objects, performance, and books-making.

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My process usually begins with photography as a way of observing and being present. I don’t document from a distance - I place myself inside the situation, through travel, labor, collaboration, or lived experience. Looking closely becomes a way of asking: what is happening here, why does it matter, and who is affected?

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From there, the work grows through research, listening, and testing. Questions lead to decisions about form and material. I choose materials that carry history, labor, access, and tension. Salt, plastic, candy, textiles, thrifted objects, and the body itself become tools because they already hold meaning before I touch them.

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Some projects begin through observation, others through personal experience (surgery, migration, work, or relationships) but they don’t stay personal. A private moment becomes a way to look at larger systems of value, survival, care, and erasure.

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I make work that asks people to look, touch, take, carry, and confront. The projects don’t resolve neatly. They press on what it costs to persist, what gets valued, and what disappears when survival becomes routine.​​​

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Some of my recent shows include FB Marketplace (Flesh & Blood),a reimagined sari-sari store that uses participatory retail display to examine bodily commodification, and Anting-Anting, a 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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Alongside exhibitions, I work with publishing as a form of research. I make small photo books and zines that let ideas live differently from the gallery. I’m currently finishing a book version of the Pangasinan salt series, and developing Un/Familiar, a visual project and zine series about places that feel both known and strange - exploring displacement, memory, and what it means to be present without belonging.

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BIO:

She has had solo exhibitions including Romantic Browns at Pineapple Lab, Makati (2018) and FB Marketplace (Flesh & Blood) at CalArts (2024). She was a resident artist at Tropical Lab 19 at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, where she also participated in the 2025 group exhibition Service. She is currently a resident artist at REEF LA for the Fall and Spring cycles.

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Her work has been shown in juried and group exhibitions including the 21st Annual Greater MFA of Los Angeles (GLAMFA) at Cal State Long Beach; Now Trending: 9th Annual Alpay Scholarship Exhibition at Palos Verdes Art Center, California; (Un)natural Confluences at the University of California, Irvine; and multiple editions of Fotomoto, including I/LAND at Ayala Museum, Gallery Indigo, and BenCab Museum in the Philippines, as well as earlier Fotomoto exhibitions such as Portraits and Home.

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She is the recipient of the Marciano Galang Acquisition Prize for Works on Paper, and her work has been acquired by the Ateneo Art Gallery in the Philippines (2020). She has received grants from CalArts including the Allan Sekula Social Documentary Fund, Bartman Foundation Grant, and the Arts Graduate Merit Scholarship.

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From 2017 to 2023, she taught in the Photography Department at De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde, where she handled courses in Basic Photography, Alternative Processes, Fine Art Photography and Exhibition, and Digital Editing (Photoshop and Lightroom), and curated multiple student exhibitions.