Visual art performance artist Ronaldo Ruiz launches The Camouflage Project, a performance photography exhibition, on May 27, 2010 at the Zsenne art lab, Brussels, Belgium.  This is part of the fifth MOMENTUM – Platform for Performance Art, an annual Belgium-based international festival focusing on visual art performance. 

The Camouflage Project

Started in 2007 in Beijing, China, The Camouflage Project is Ronaldo Ruiz’ ongoing docu-commentary performance in photographs.  As an exploration of natural habitat and man’s liability in today’s ecological issues, The Camouflage Project was conceptualized based on Ruiz’ zeal for interpreting human responsibility for the environment he exists in. By using his body in visual performance both as an anchor and as a signifier of the need to lose one’s identity in his surroundings for total immersion, assimilation and compassion, Ruiz in The Camouflage Project lets himself be photographed while doing performances in open space, natural formations or man-made structures.  With his actions usually entailing hiding parts of his anatomy, most notably the head, in the various settings he finds himself in, it is worth noticing that Ruiz usually executes these performances in bright red clothing, which serves against the purpose of blending in with his surroundings.  On the contrary, his alarming presence serves as an intervention to the usually placid surroundings as he forces his body to fit into crevices, fissures and chasms.  In preferring the visual loss of his head, however, it seems that Ruiz is bowing down to the powers of nature, letting himself be subordinated by the undeviating presence of the earth’s natural features.

As an ongoing endeavor, Ruiz continues to set his performances against notable locations, from the moon crater-like rock formations in the beaches and steep cliffs of Biri, Capol, Salvacion, and San Antonio in Samar, Philippines, its seemingly fathomless crystal blue waters, or even soft loam and driftwood formations elsewhere.  In China he tries to blend into the Great Wall and lies against stone croppings in ChengDu’s Flower Park.  In more urbanized areas like Hong Kong and Singapore, he sites himself with man-made structures and fountains. 

The Camouflage Project will be further exhibited in a travelling showcase of visual art performance and art photography around the Philippines, in Seoul, Korea, Yangon, Myanmar, and Copenhagen, Denmark, as the artist’s statement against habitat destruction and man’s apathy to his part in the devastation of his sole sanctuary.