Connecting people through art 

We are thrilled to announce that artists John Torres & Shireen Seno (b.1975, 1983, Philippines) have been chosen as winners of the third Han Nefkens Foundation, Mori Art Museum, M+, Hong Kong and Singapore Art Museum – Moving Image Commission.

The Moving Image Commission 2025 Jury: "We are thrilled to announce the selection of Shireen Seno and John Torres for the third edition of the Han Nefkens Foundation Moving Image Commission, marking them as the first artists from the Philippines to be recognized in this program. Their proposal, A Cure for Colonial Amnesia, demonstrates their longstanding commitment to world-building through filmmaking, addressing profound themes of labour, memory and resistance. This innovative work, which harmonizes sound, archives, and space, invites us to explore how historical reflections are woven into the socio-political landscapes and daily lives of individuals. We are excited to support their journey to uncover and capture the healing and resilience within the complex history of the Philippines. Their unique and earnest perspectives on the everyday experiences of the Filipino people promise to deliver deep insights that will resonate throughout the region.”

Seno and Torres said: “We are filmmakers in different stages of our career and we have never co-directed. We are also parents to two little ones. It is in this space between film and art that we get to work together as we reflect on our role as artist-parents responding to the world while thinking about our personal histories and navigating new and other ways of making sense of things. The Han Nefkens Foundation's support provides not just financial backing but also recognition of the unique perspective we bring as filmmakers transitioning into new artistic territory. We are deeply grateful for this opportunity to continue to grow and challenge one another. We hope our journey might inspire others who find themselves at a similar crossroads between film, art, and life.”
Han Nefkens: “I'm convinced that with this commission John and Shireen will be able to explore new avenues that will enrich them both on an artistic and on a more personal level. And I'm sure that we, the prospective audience will be equally enriched by the result.”

Seno and Torres will receive $100,000 USD for the production of a screen-based video artwork, for which they now have up to eighteen months to complete. The focus of the Han Nefkens Foundation is upon working with and helping artists, as such while the foundation does not receive any copy of the produced artwork, an edition of the newly completed work will be donated to and presented in each collaborating museum.

Seno and Torres were selected by a final jury chaired by Han Nefkens and composed of the directors of each museum - Kataoka Mami, Director, Mori Art Museum; Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, Hong Kong and Eugene Tan, Director, Singapore Art Museum - in the presence of Hilde Teerlinck, General Director Han Nefkens Foundation and Alessandra Biscaro, Coordinator Han Nefkens Foundation. This unique collaboration aims to strengthen the relations among the institutions, developing a project that is first and foremost sustainable.

In order to underline the artist’s career, the Han Nefkens Foundation, Mori Art Museum, M+, Hong Kong and Singapore Art Museum – Moving Image Commission appraises promising artists aged 35 and above, of Asian nationality or living in Asia and who have established a solid trajectory but have not been given a major opportunity to exhibit extensively worldwide.

The four artists on the shortlist, prior to the final selection were Che-Yu Hsu (b.1985, Taiwan), Riar Rizaldi (b. 1990, Indonesia), John Torres & Shireen Seno (b.1975, 1983, Philippines) and Yashaswini Raghunandan (b.1986, India).
The original long-list of artists was scouted by curators Kyongfa Che (Japan), Inhan Cho (South Korea), Raphael Fonseca (Brazil), Honor Hager (New Zealand), Shai Heredia (India) Christina Li (Hong Kong) Carol Yinghua Lu (China), Norberto Roldan (Philippines) and Frankie Su (Taiwan).



Shireen Seno and John Torres
Shireen Seno is an artist and filmmaker whose work addresses memory, history, and image-making, often in relation to the idea of home. A recipient of the 2018 Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, she is known for her films which have won awards at Rotterdam, Punto de Vista, Shanghai, Olhar de Cinema, Vladivostok, and have screened at such festivals as New Directors/New Films, Viennale, Yebisu International Festival of Art & Alternative Visions, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, and institutions including Tate Modern, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Taipei National Center for Photography and Images, Museum of the Moving Image, MMCA Seoul, MCAD Manila, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum Chiang Mai, and M+, Hong Kong. Seno was a 2022 Film Fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin program and 2023 Visiting Professor for ArteVisione at c/o in Milan. Her first solo exhibition in Europe, A child dies, a child plays, a woman is born, a woman dies, a bird arrives, a bird flies off, at daadgalerie in Berlin in 2023, travelled to Esplanade - Theatres By the Bay in Singapore in 2024. Her work is in the collections of Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive and Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.

John Torres is an independent filmmaker, musician, and writer, known for his highly personal and poetic style. His work fictionalizes and reworks personal and found documentations of love, family relations, and memory in relation to current events, hearsay, myth, and folklore. Weaving together archival clips, found footage, and visually powerful imagery, his films unfold narrative structures, often with strong autobiographical references, that defy conventional tropes and genres. Distinctions include the Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema at the 2006 Vancouver International Film Festival for his debut feature, Todo Todo Teros. It won the NETPAC and FIPRESCI critics awards at Singapore International Film Festival and a Jury Special Mention at the Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival. His second feature film, Years When I was a Child Outside, won Jury Special Mention at Bangkok and Grand Jury Prize at Cinemanila, and screened in competition at Rotterdam and as a multi-channel work at Berlin Forum Expanded. His fourth feature, Lukas The Strange, won Special Mention at the Festival de Cine Lima Independiente in 2013, and People Power Bombshell: The Diary of Vietnam Rose won a Special Mention in the New Views section of the Olhar de Cinema: Curitiba International Film Festival in Brazil. He has made more than a dozen short films, including, We Still Have to Close Our Eyes (TIFF Wavelengths, 2019). John was a featured artist at the Flaherty Seminar in 2018 and an artist-in-residence at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art in Singapore in 2019. A special focus of John's works was shown at the Viennale in 2013 and at Oberhausen in 2024.

Shireen Seno and John Torres had their exhibition, Cloudy with a chance of coconuts in 2019 at Portikus in Frankfurt. In Manila, they run Los Otros, a critically-acclaimed platform committed to the intersections of film and art, with a focus on process over product.