Kiri Dalena is a visual artist and filmmaker whose work addresses social and political injustices, particularly in the Philippines.

In her evocative short film Mag-uuma (Farmer) – Lamentation by Melfe Ebalang from Valencia, Bukidnon 2014, Dalena filmed a young woman singing a haunting ballad of poverty and injustice. The woman, Melfe Ebalang, stands in a rice field, where farmers stopped work to listen to her sing. While covering the struggles of farmers and Indigenous people in Mindanao in 2014, Dalena had first encountered Ebalang singing during a protest.

Dalena, who has worked as a human rights volunteer, comments that what is usually expected of her in peasant communities is to document human rights abuses in the form of testimonies and interviews. When asked what inspired her to make this work, she replied: ‘These songs can awaken something that I thought was impossible to hold or capture. Something intangible, like hope’.

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