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I am a Filipino artist based in the UK who combines the cultures of two countries in my artwork. My upbringing in the West has made me fascinated with preserving memories of the Philippines and the UK. This journey of preservation is a significant part of my work, reflecting my love for my birthplace and ethnicity.
I feel strongly connected to the Philippines, my parents' home country, with its rich traditions and tropical beauty. In honour of this connection, I organise photoshoots featuring friends from my Filipino community in Suffolk to practice and preserve Filipino values in photographs as a souvenir after being geographically far away from the Philippines. I also work with my photo archives from my visits to the Philippines to see my family and use them to make mixed-media art.
Because the UK is prosperous in royal history and in-rooted customs such as ceramics and porcelain, I use porcelain bric-a-brac in combination with my photographs to tie into the idea of two homes, and I believe that this blend allows me to explore identity in more depth and find similarities and differences between cultures.
I aim to convey a sense of unity in my work by encouraging viewers to appreciate the richness of cultural exchange and the beauty of shared human experiences.
My installation is memorabilia of my cultural ties to the Philippines and an event during the grief of a loved one – the act of playing Bingo. 'Laro' means to play in Tagalog, and Bingo is a universal game. I experienced playing Bingo for the first time in the Philippines during my grandmother's funeral, and I was interested in how they socialised and interacted with the game.
The colours of the Bingo cards that layer across a long table are vibrant and lively. Therefore, I have been inspired by this. I designed an immersive and interactive room installation that invites visitors to sit down with others to play and experience a Filipino way of playing Bingo, using porcelain squares as bingo markers. Porcelain and bric-a-brac items have been woven through the theme of this room installation, as it references my upbringing in the UK and Britain's collective interest in porcelain and decorative items in the 17th century.
The room is colourful, with handmade and woven tablecloths made by a company from the Philippines paired with a hybrid transformed second-hand mixed-media tissue paper flower installations that I have made myself, being inspired by the Pahiyas festival that celebrates thanksgiving and harvest.
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