Transfiguration: A Divine Intervention unfolds across days of collective gathering that moves from reflection to preparation and finally into ritual encounter. Rooted in Indigenous Philippine cosmologies and shaped by queer and trans experience, the project explores the emergence of the dark feminine and the sovereign woman as a necessary archetype for our time.
The work proposes that ritual is not simply symbolic performance but a way of perceiving reality differently. When people gather in ritual, patterns of attention shift; the body listens differently, the land is experienced as alive, and stories acquire the power to reshape how communities understand themselves. Through communal preparation of sacred space, and a participatory fire ritual, the project invites audiences into a shared threshold where myth, memory, and lived experience converge.
Ram Botero is an artist, writer, cultural worker, community facilitator and filmmaker from Mindanao, Philippines. In 2019, she directed the film Pamalugu (In Limbo), which has been screened internationally (Fukuoka Independent Film Festival, 2021), and at several national film festivals – earning accolades at the 2019 editions of the Ngilngig Asian Fantastic Film Festival and Festival de Cine Paz Zamboanga. She is currently in the production stages of her forthcoming films Eksotik (2025), Diwata (2024). Ram is one of the artists behind the photographic project ‘Diwata: Queering Pre-Colonial Philippine Mythology’, commissioned by the 2021 Southeast Asian Queer Cultural Festival, and exhibited in Fukuoka, Japan, later that same year. Ram’s essay ‘Of Myths and Goddesses: The Trans Voice in Art and Feminist Spaces’ was published in Archival Glitch, a collection of lectures by feminist artists in Asia and the Pacific. She has recently produced the performance for camera ‘Siren’s Song’ for the European Capital of Culture (Elefsina, Greece, 2023).
