Empty Wrappers (2024), aluminum foil and lights
Empty Wrappers about embracing uncertainty and the unexpected. It is about transforming failure into a humorous spectacle. In this unused liminal space, I see a staircase that resembles a passenger boarding bridge, and I think about the risks, challenges and the constant uphill battle of being an immigrant.
In this site specific installation, I create large aluminum foil forms that resemble used-up wrappers and install it in the emergency shaft that connects the two main sections of the iconic OCAD U building in Toronto.
This piece is an intervention and performance, as this area is restricted, and the installation was done without permission. Using foil made it possible to make large forms that are quick to set up and deinstall, when eventually caught by security personnel.
Imagined Ricefields (2023), acrylic on canvas, 60 x 120 in
An imagined map of a rural farming village I’ve drawn based on memory. It’s about my severed personal history as a migrant and the struggle of finding home and belonging away from my native country. Installed in cold and snowy landscapes, I show the dislocation I felt moving to a different part of the world.
Installed in a tree that’s falling over, it represents my disconnection with the land particularly with the vegetation and flora. It’s a reminder of the typhoon that felled the century old mango trees that destroyed my grandmother's ancestral house, right before I left the Philippines.
Installed in a bridge, it represents the struggle to connect the distance between my native country and my new county. My son, who was only two years old during our move to Canada, was holding on to the painting in the photograph.
Hyperventilation (2024), metal sheets on air purifier
Hyperventilation embodies the collective anxieties of the pandemic and post-pandemic era.
This piece is part sculpture, part performance and was installed during a critique. The challenge I tasked myself with is to find an object in the room that I could install the cold bent metal sheets magnetically.
Glitched Tabos (2023)
These altered objects are called ‘tabos’ – a Filipino term for a dipper or a container that has a long handle. I use the idea of glitch, to represent the habit changes, fading memories, hybridities and transformations that come with migration.
Portable Sculpture No. 2 is an ephemeral sculpture that I carried for a week around Flemingdon Park, the neighborhood I reside in Toronto. One of the goals is to find spaces where it could fit and belong.
Inspired by the Filipino tradition of using ‘balik-balayan’ boxes, this work is about the constant movements, transitions, adaptations of my identity as an immigrant. It is about my struggle of finding home and my inability to truly settle down.
Put beside a concrete block, seems like it belongs naturally. It inherits some of the qualities of the block. It may seem heavy, sturdy and lasting, when the truth is the opposite.
The sculpture is made of cardboard boxes fused with wheat paste, and Manila paper, a type of paper made during America’s colonization of the Philippines.
The Ephemeral Fort (2024), wood on concrete
The Ephemeral Fort is about the elusiveness of permanence, the desire to build a life and to secure a stable future. Made with found materials, constructed over a discovered landscape – spray-painted wood on large concrete blocks – it is a temporary monument that declares my presence in my community.
Installed in the unfinished East Don Trail in Toronto, a parkland in my neighbourhood, I make a fleeting mark in the land I’ve called home in the past 15 years.
Country Roads, Take Me Home (2024), mirrors, lights, multimedia projection
Country Roads, Take Me Home is an immersive artwork composed of projection, lights, sound and objects. In a dark space, I projected an altered recording of myself using Google Street View, and used mirrors shaped like mango, guava, santol, jute and bamboo leaves to reflect lights that overlay around the video projection.
In this work, I attempt to transport myself and the viewer to an afterimage of my memories – to show how it feels like growing up in a place surrounded by rice fields and mango trees.
Short Documentation: https://vimeo.com/898968979
Locker 3199 invites viewers to peek into the emotional turmoil that lies beneath uncertainty and transience.
Installed in an empty locker, the distorted forms and lights represent the excitement of possibility intertwined with the fear of the unknown.