ABOUT THE WORK
Today, Filipino-Americans constitute the third largest Asian-American group in the U.S. Yet today, stories about our national history and immigration to this country are rarely heard, and if so, are not often understood and appreciated in their distinct political and human contexts. It is the awareness of this particular lack of conversation in the cultural scene that propelled me to start working on a visual narrative/commentary on the Filipino saga. The story starts with "Pinoy", a racial and cultural profile of Filipinos. It shows the wide gamut of racial characteristics that make up the ethnic group as well as the various objects and artifacts that are identified with the people. Then followed by a densely packed synopses of the major colonial influences in the Philippines - Spanish for more than three centuries, and American for half a century - and how they have impacted the native culture. The piece, Manila Village, deals with a little known fact that there were Filipinos living in Louisiana as far back as 1763 and probably earlier. Escaping Spanish galleon ships in Mexico, they found their way to the bayous. Shortly after official American colonization of the country, large-scale immigration of Filipinos to the United States of America started. Cheap labor was needed to fill the shortage resulting from the moratorium on Chinese labor import. The first wave of immigrants consisted mainly of men, recruited by labor contractors to work in Hawaiian pineapple and sugar plantations, agricultural fields in the West Coast, and gold mines and fish canneries in Alaska. Several paintings deal with the salient experiences of these workers as gleaned from various historical sources. Other social issues are tackled in several pieces, using her own ironic take, for example, in the piece, "Kulang Pa" (2009) showing part of 3,000 pairs of shoes that Imelda Marcos was said to have owned when she and her husband ruled the impoverished nation.
Today, Filipino-Americans constitute the third largest Asian-American group in the U.S. Yet today, stories about our national history and immigration to this country are rarely heard, and if so, are not often understood and appreciated in their distinct political and human contexts. It is the awareness of this particular lack of conversation in the cultural scene that propelled me to start working on a visual narrative/commentary on the Filipino saga. The story starts with "Pinoy", a racial and cultural profile of Filipinos. It shows the wide gamut of racial characteristics that make up the ethnic group as well as the various objects and artifacts that are identified with the people. Then followed by a densely packed synopses of the major colonial influences in the Philippines - Spanish for more than three centuries, and American for half a century - and how they have impacted the native culture. The piece, Manila Village, deals with a little known fact that there were Filipinos living in Louisiana as far back as 1763 and probably earlier. Escaping Spanish galleon ships in Mexico, they found their way to the bayous. Shortly after official American colonization of the country, large-scale immigration of Filipinos to the United States of America started. Cheap labor was needed to fill the shortage resulting from the moratorium on Chinese labor import. The first wave of immigrants consisted mainly of men, recruited by labor contractors to work in Hawaiian pineapple and sugar plantations, agricultural fields in the West Coast, and gold mines and fish canneries in Alaska. Several paintings deal with the salient experiences of these workers as gleaned from various historical sources. Other social issues are tackled in several pieces, using her own ironic take, for example, in the piece, "Kulang Pa" (2009) showing part of 3,000 pairs of shoes that Imelda Marcos was said to have owned when she and her husband ruled the impoverished nation.
