Xyza Cruz Bacani (b. 1987, the Philippines) is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and writer based in New York. Her experience as a second-generation domestic worker in Hong Kong informs her practice and engagement in less visible, erased, and underreported world events. Her works explore migration, transnational identity, climate change, and labor.
Bacani received her M.A. in Arts Politics at New York University in 2022. She has been recognized as one of Asia Society’s Asia 21 Young Leaders, Artpil’s 30 Under 30 Women Photographers, Forbes’s 30 Under 30 Asia, and BBC’s 100 Women of the World. Her artistic accomplishments are documented by the Philippines House of Representatives under ‘House Resolution No. 1969’. She received multiple grants from the New York State Council of the Arts, WMA Commission, the Open Society Moving Walls Foundation, and the Pulitzer Center, and was one of the Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellows. She is also the author of We Are Like Air.
Bacani’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of the City of New York, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, KADIST Collection, Asian Art Museum San Francisco, Foreign Correspondents Club Hong Kong, New York University Special Collections, and numerous private collections worldwide.
The Philippines plastic crisis is deeply intertwined with poverty, economic structures, and global waste exports. Xyza Cruz Bacani, a former second-generation migrant domestic worker who uses photography to raise awareness about under-reported stories, shares a photo essay giving a first hand look into the lives of those who suffer most from an international plastic crisis.