11 minutes

"In 1898, when the United States took over from Spain as the Philippines' colonial masters, we managed a voyage to the NEW WORLD without having to leave tropical waters. We became inmates of Hollywood; felt the pulse of the mighty automobile beneath our feet; inspected the NEW WORLD species in the form of Yankee administrators as closely as they inspected us...we know all about America before we came."

Filipino American writer Luis H. Francia for the 1997 art catalog "Memories of Overdevelopment"

The past is a foreign country and a familiar TV show. I was born in Hollywood California, the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, which is also the city my family immigrated to in late 1960s and early 1970s. In my artwork, television and films intermingle with personal memory, and social history. My mother becomes a starlet, grandfather the protaganist, and I the anagonist, costar, and time traveler. Sitting in between a critical position and one of naivete, idealism, and romance, my artwork is about the formal, political, and personal.  I seek and create representations that discuss the overlap of post-colonialism, the construction of identity, media image, and family lineage.

When I make work I always address the medium I am working in, which is essential to the content and  the relationship to the images I represent. Often using video, film, and photography, I allude to time that has passed, time that is passing, and a time that has been constructed. Temporality becomes prevalent in the formal issues of my work; the possibility of light bulbs burning out, dropping frames indicating the end of a film roll, and appropriating found images that reference a particular historical time-frame.

A majority of my work is based on photographs taken when my family first immigrated to the US from the Philippines in 1969 and 1971, a time of cultural upheval and redefinition. During this revolution, my family sought to define their own identities in the context of Hollywood, Disneyland, and Kodak. By recontextualizing the small snapshots into large format photographs, video installations, and sculpture, I am able to articulate a complex relationship with them that is often problematic and surreal.