Florentina Hubaldo, CTE

Florentina Hubaldo keeps repeating her story, orally, akin to a mantra, a meditation and a prayer; her way of remembering; her means of maintaining hope for survival and redemption; fighting with what’s left of her memory. She lives and exist in a place and a condition where history, her story, is being systematically being obliterated. Two gold hunters endlessly dig the ground with their shovels and hoes for the proverbial treasure that will emancipate them. A father sadly waits for the death of her fragile daughter.

Butterflies Have No Memories

Man is good and man is evil; man’s complex nature and existence has always been defined by these two opposite sides. In a remote island in the Philippines, the inhabitants of a once-prosperous town have been struggling since a giant Canadian gold mining company was forced to close down. While the company’s departure carried an important victory for people who fought for its closure because of environmental concerns, it also made a lot of people bitter, angry and desperate. It was an economic debacle for them. And they perpetually long for th...