Woven Ancestry - 2021
40” x 30” oil, graphite, and wax pencil on cardstock
This piece is about ancestry “woven” into ones being in both seen and unseen ways, and attempts to unravel the way in which I’ve found myself relating to my Filipino and European ancestries as a kind of folklore or myth, rather than something material or present. In tandem with the idea of culture experienced as myth, I’m intrigued by how ones cultural understanding consists of "imagined" and "borrowed" memory as much as it does ones actual memory and knowledge of the culture/cultures.
Communal Sleeping - 2021
20” x 15” graphite, colored pencil, and oil on cardstock
“Communal Sleeping” is a piece depicting the unique and intimate cultural environments experienced within a family, interlacing both interior and exterior environments together on the same plane in order to bridge the seen and the unseen.
MYTH IN MIND - 2021
20” x 24" oil on partially gesso primed wood board
'Myth In Mind' is a piece about the creating personal myth. 'Personal myth' is a fraise used to describe the process of taking things from everyday life and using them in place of things one has never seen before such as a creature described in a fairly tale or myth. The black egg in the woman’s throat is imagery taken from Filipino folklore about witches told to me as a girl. Filipino witches pass on their curse of witch-hood by giving a family member, usually a daughter, the black egg that resides within their throat. The recipient in turn consumes the egg in order to inherit the curse and relieve their kin who can finally pass away. As a child I always wondered what sort of a bird lived inside the egg, I imagined it was something dark and otherworldly. Later in life, living in the state of Vermont I encountered one particular lake inhabiting bird that fit this imagined unearthliness: the loon. The mountain lake scene adjacent to the bird is a memory from a trip to the Philippines when I was a girl, but could be mistaken for a lake in the mountains of Vermont or some other North American landscape as the fog across the mountain top creates the illusion of snow.
Three Filipino Princesses - 2022
13” x 9” colored pencil, origami paper, and trace paper
“Three Filipino Princesses” is a piece about immigration and personal myth. Due to issues with the American immigration system, my three older sisters lived in the Philippines until I was 10. Unable to visit regularly, my main form of connection was through photographs. As a little girl I loved to look at three photos of them in particular. Sitting with one foot crossed under the other, hands clasped demurely, in their best dress, my sisters looked not unlike my favorite princess Snow White.
Each of my sisters is dressed in a different color: red, blue, and yellow. Coincidentally not only are these the colors of Snow White’s dress, but are also the colors of the Filipino flag. And not unlike the Filipino flag, accented with a yellow sun and stars, the youngest of my three sisters is accented by a pair of yellow socks.
Drawn on trace paper, my sisters appear as ghosts, much like their presence in my early years of life: not physically there, but still present, like the way fairytales are—unreal, but ever in our hearts and minds. Layered on top of each other, with one aspect from each of their outfits, they together become simultaneously a symbol of the Philippines as well as a symbol of American culture.