Zora Engalan

To Be Buried in America tells the story of my family’s emigration from the Philippines to Detroit in the early 1970s. Vintage, dreamlike photos of a father’s journey, leaving his wife and son behind to carve out a new life for them in America, are superimposed onto photographs of tropical plants found in the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory on Belle Isle.

The shadowy, black-and-white visuals of tropical plants evoke the native landscape of the Philippines, now only able to exist safely in the interior–representing the effects of assimilation needed to survive as an immigrant in America. The haunting black-and-white visuals contrast with the light and hopeful quality of the family photos, representing what is both gained and lost to the American Dream.