Sense of Place 

I went through a period of creating art using pebbles, bark, and fallen maple, oak or cedar leaves. Became more than collecting. At first, I saw it as a distraction from my abstract mixed media practice focused on social justice. I wanted to create something “light” and easy to digest. But I’ve come to understand that my art and identity are not separate from place; both are continually shaped by it. I was tracing my presence within a landscape.

 

These were not acacia, narra, or kamagong leaves; nor aratilis, ylang-ylang, kalachuchi or kamachili, that once framed my sense of home back in Manila. I didn’t know it yet, but these gathered bits of landscape asked me to acknowledge, to situate myself here. In receiving the fragments, I was also acknowledging that I am here: briefly, contingently, and always in relation.

 

My work, at that moment became less about making and more about acknowledging a place, the land. I’ve since released that series about 'place' and 'emplacement'. It was a necessary step toward my current work, which turns more inward, more directly toward heritage, my colonized identity, and the visible and invisible stories that continue to shape me. My personal series, The Shape of Unlearning followed that.