My practice combines personal narrative, magic realism, and the proximity of specific events to translate installation and performance based work. I stage detailed assemblages to create an experience that is not historically factual, but rather a fragmented journey through systems of belief, value, and reconciliation. In examining my relationship to stewardship through generational inheritance, I explore larger systemic constructs of cultural aphasia, whiteness, and hybridity as a means to grieve—to inscribe loss softly and fiercely into a landscape that is not native but is home.
The oscillation between collective history and private experience acts as a prologue that transcends into the display of ephemera and physical remnants from the Filipino diaspora in my work. I use modes of collaboration, at times between people, but often with non-human beings, such as plants or spirits, to complicate the role of authorship within an artwork. The materials that shape my practice are often inherited, sought out, or invisible. These components are meant to articulate the multiplicity of what it means to try to embody an intangible heritage through the lens of what it means to claim a national identity. These components are meant to articulate the multiplicity of what it means to try to embody an intangible heritage through examining the lens of national identity.