What They Left Us
An exhibition tracing memory, migration, and the silent labor of inheritance
Tracing My Filipino Past
Last year, artist and curator Anna Divinagracia (also known as Divina) reached out saying she wanted to work together, but didn’t know on what exactly. I have been a fan of Divina’s work for a while now, so when she reached out, I told her I would be down when the time came. A month later, that time came and she asked me to co-curate an all-Filipino artist exhibition in Baltimore. Since that day last October, we have been planning, organizing, curating, and making new work for our exhibition, What They Left Us.
This exhibition started as a question: How do we build a Filipino community as adults? This question has been burning in my mind since I first visited my homeland, Albay, Philippines, in 2023. I just kept thinking, how would I connect with my Filipino heritage when my lola (grandmother in Tagalog) passed away? Growing up, I was constantly surrounded by Filipinos. I even took Tagalog and Tinikiling (the Philippines’ national dance) classes as a child. I had our country’s famous foods like lumpia, pancit, adobo, and more at every celebration. From graduations to birthdays, that food was there, hand-prepared by my lola and mother. Something that formed into a tradition. We didn’t even entertain the idea of catering or going out to eat. In my lola’s words, “I make better.” And it was true, she did.
Like many multiracial kids, being multiracial has always felt more like a conflict than a blessing. Growing up with my Black family, in a predominantly Black county, and appearing more Black than white or Filipino, I kind of felt like I had to choose a side. Since that day in 5th grade, when I told my mom I wanted to quit my Tagalog classes because I wanted to be outside with friends, I have focused on Black history, culture, and my experiences as a Black person in America.
As I grew older and exercised my independence more, the Filipino picnics, balls, dances, and other celebrations started to fade. The Filipino food was always there, my lola was always there, but that sense of community and culture was gone.
Then, at 30, I visited the Philippines with my sisters for my lola’s 70th Birthday. I finally met my family. I saw where my lola grew up, the two houses she built in Albay —something I had only heard about since high school. I felt the black sand underneath my feet. Swam in the waters of that side of the Pacific Ocean. Did my meditation movements to Kaytranada’s “Be Your Girl” in front of Mt. Mayon, the active volcano on the island —a volcano I saw steam push out day and night, that same volcano my lola showed me in her pictures as a little girl. I saw my Aunty’s rice farms, the labor of planting, growing, and picking rice. And I witnessed the everyday tasks my cousins were expected to complete and how they never once back-talked or complained about it (I had to tell my sisters to take notes, b/c compared to them, they were slacking).
Above it all, the thing that mattered most to me was that I got to experience this with my sisters. It was their first time out of the country, and it was to our homeland. I walked away feeling like I knew another part of myself that I didn’t want to shut out or remember only when I ate Filipino food or saw my lola.
Later in 2023, for an elective class, we were asked to list our ethnicity, and like always, I wrote down Black, white, and Filipino. It was in that moment that I questioned, why did I always list Filipino last? At the end of the semester, we had to complete an “Intercultural Practice Self Assessment Reflection”, meaning we had to reflect on our social identity through an artwork and/or written paper. I was already thinking about daughterhood and decided to make that my focus for this project. I immediately knew I wanted to explore my mother’s and her mother’s daughter identities. Between my visit to the Philippines and going through my mother’s and lola’s archives, I was finally able to trace my Filipino roots in a way that helped me remember my childhood and this connection I once had to other Filipinos. These photos were a portal to my past, a thread connecting me to my home, the Philippines.
A Thread of Daughters (featured in What They Left Us) is a piece that sewed together my mother’s, my lola’s, and my daughterhood. Instead of looking at my mother and lola as these all-knowing women, I could now relate to them and see them through our experience as daughters. It was the first time I thought about my mother’s daughter identity and the first time I asked my lola about hers.
My mother was the firstborn and the only daughter. She was responsible, reliable, and forced to grow up quickly to help her mother. As a result, starting as early as age five, she would have to take care of her brothers and herself while my lola worked night shifts —even though she had an older brother. She grew up poor, which influenced so much of her life. The worry and stress she always had about money and our well-being. This story isn’t much different from my lola’s. For my lola, as the third child out of 11 and the second-born daughter, her daughterhood required her to leave school in the 4th grade to work. Since the age of 4, she was expected to help feed her family because they were dirt poor. She took on many jobs in the Philippines. Making and selling food, working the rice fields, cleaning homes, babysitting, working as a waitress, she had to do it all.
At 18 years old, as a waitress, she met an American man from Pennsylvania, who was stationed in Manila. She became pregnant, married, and against her will, her mother told her to go to America. My lola told me she didn’t want to leave, but her mother told her to go, so she went. And maybe my dakilang lola didn’t want her to go either, but as a mother, I am sure she imagined what her daughter’s life could be if she left for America. Hearing my lola’s story pushed me to think deeply and critically about what my lola gave up in order for me to be here today.
It was A Thread of Daughters that connected me to my mother’s and lola’s daughterhood experience, gave birth to my thesis work, and prepared me to co-curate What They Left Us with my fellow Filipina sister, Divina.
What They Left Us:
As Divina and I planned for this exhibition, we wanted to center the stories of our families’ migration and what they and other Filipinos left for us to become in America. Whether that be leaving behind the life and home they knew, letters and photographs, or the actual labor and sacrifices they made, we were focused on bringing that to light, because it is so easy to forget all that they left for us as first and second generation Filipinos.
What They Left Us ties together eight Filipino-American artists who use personal, familial, and cultural photographs to trace connections to their families and their countries: the Philippines and America. The featured work considers how art becomes a means of holding onto and reshaping what has been passed down, allowing us to honor and examine what we’ve inherited and hope to preserve.
The biggest takeaway for me from this exhibition and the work in it is the importance of a physical archive. As Filipino artists, the work that we make is actively contributing to that physical archive… for our families and for the Philippines. Choosing to be artists and make work like this is a powerful choice. This path as artists is not ideal for our immigrant families, and it takes a lot of convincing and sacrifice for them to understand and support the work we do.
What They Left Us features work by Thea Canlas, Miguel Caba, Ashley Dequilla, Ryan Frigillana, Dhaynne Torres, Kat Navarro, along with Divina and me.
This show wouldn’t be possible without the support of our sponsors. Maryland State Arts Council, Towson University Asian Arts and Culture Center, and Off the Rox Wine & Beer. Without their support, this exhibition would be nothing more than a dream.
Information:
The opening reception was on Thursday, July 3rd, and we had over 130 RSVPS! Below you will find the information about our exhibition.
Gallery: The Alchemy of Art, 1637 Eastern Ave, Baltimore, MD
Duration: Until August 2, 2025 —the gallery is open every Saturday from 12-5 pm.
Or by appointment only. Please call/text 805-705-2305 to schedule a viewing.
Programming:
Saturday, July 17th, we will be hosting a free Tinikling tutorial at The Alchemy of Art. Please RSVP here.
Saturday, August 2nd, will be our closing reception featuring an artist and curator talk. The time and artists will be revealed later this month.
This is the first time I have curated and co-curated, and it is my first time exhibiting with other Filipino artists. This exhibition has become the answer to me and Divina’s question: it is through our artwork that we create and sustain a Filipino community.
Thanks for reading.
Hope to see some of you at our exhibition,
Ciarra K. Walters
Curating is the fundamental alphabet to restoring and reclaiming the American Filipino identity and tradition.
Your aesthetic presence, history, and photos capture the spring years of a nostalgic quest to know more about your roots. In contrast white American doesn’t honor historical culture and tradition paralleled to emergence of what white Americans calls a melting pot society, if the immigrant subject and presence wish to remain cultural entity in the modern perception of a ethnic community, the drive, courage, and audacity for young adults have decided they will no longer wish for white American to tell their story.
Marcus Garvey wrote, “A people without the knowledge of their history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots".
This quote is so true and those who will not honor and search their history and antiquity will reflect “a tree without the roots!”
I think that is why I am so gun-ho about world history general and African history specific because colonial deception and deliberate agenda have left the black history for the most part.
For example, the legacy and brilliance of Tunic G. Campbell
Tunis Gulic Campbell: A Native Son’s Defiance of Expatriation and Struggle for Justice in New York City and New Jersey, was born free in middlebrow, New Jersey, in 1812.
In addition, in an era where many
Believed liberation for Black Americans could only be achieved by leaving the country. Tunis G. Campbell, not only stood firm in his opposition but also defied the dominant ideologies of his time. However, he pledged that he would “never leave this country until every slave was free on American soil.
Beneath my subliminal consciousness, I search and read history, while my wife doesn’t quite understand me and/or the necessity of historical restoration as a common activity for the strength of a people. I don’t let it bother me I have become an American African social consciousness and an avid reader of historical climate as you have decided to curate your ethnic presence, tradition, and history by exhibiting a collaboration as an exhibit and dissertation which I honor The work reflects historical restoration and reclaim.
Finally, I am thinking about curating my immediate history but I don’t have any living documents, relevant old photos of my immediate family to begin an ancestral quest.
Beautiful read 🤎🤎