I work primarily in analog-based, 2-dimensional mediums like film photography and collage. My work focuses on themes of my Filipino heritage and identity to explore the impact of colonialism on indigenous cultures and, in turn, their diasporas. My work evokes the haunting feeling of knowing that there is something more out there–of staggering through history, looking for something before colonization. It takes on the heaviness of carrying back what little you find remains of your people as they were, in their truest, albeit flawed pre-colonial form.
I seek to explore a shared history through myself and my family’s story. This diasporic haunting is not something unique to myself–it’s shared between many people in many places. In my work, I hold the story of my ancestry sacred and recognize that many other children of diaspora do too. My work is for everyone beside me in the diaspora, anyone whose culture has been overwritten and transmuted by colonial powers, anyone who holds their own story as more sacred than the conqueror’s version of history.
In my work, I reference evocative historical images and treat them as artifacts uncovered in the story of a people forever changed. I change these images back, to establish myself as the keeper of my own story, to overwrite the colonial narrative, to tell the story of a diasporic heritage with the care that only its own can give it.