Pin Calacal is a visual artist based in Manila. She spent half of her childhood in two almost opposite cities having gone to school in the City of Manila yet having lived in the southern fringes of the metropolis. Consequently, she has spent a huge portion of her life traversing the Metro Manila traffic, always stuck in motion from the beginning. Most of her works are anchored in her understanding of the body and its movement, control, sickness and temporariness. Using the body also as a “lens”, her concerns extend to identity, the fleetingness of human connections, the definition of home and place, and the social structures tied to these.

She works with a variety of mediums and materials, which include graphite, acrylic, pen and ink, yarn, textile, paper, found objects and hair. She sometimes describes her art processes as ritualistic, necessarily repetitive, occasionally performative, and borderline obsessive.

Pin Calacal is a graduate of Ateneo de Manila University. She then received her degree in Fine Arts, Major in Studio Arts (Painting) from the University of the Philippines, Diliman where she, in 2015, graduated summa cum laude, the first to ever do so in the history of the UP College of Fine Arts.