spice box city

About this original series

Artist's statement, 2007: Musician, videomaker, yoga teacher, single mom. I was born in 1972, a 2nd-generation Filipina-American, only five years after anti-miscegenation laws were ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. I was a first-hand witness to the formation of Filipino communities in my childhood home in Oxnard, California and later in suburban Washington, D.C. My videos, poetry, canvas-painting and performance are a documentation of my life experiences, which confront social oppression and observe what it means to be a Filipina-American.My creative process requires constant attention to stories - stories that come not only from books, but from the kitchen table, or over email, or in the midst of doing activist work in the queer Asian American women's community. Inspiration comes from the stories told by my sixth-grade son that challenge his own biracial, Filipino and white identity. Authors and artists like Chandra Talpade Mohanty, who wrote a collection of essays entitled Feminism Without Borders, as well as Sabrina Margarita Alcantara-Tan's independently published zines and the writings in Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire also inspire my work. The tools that I learned from my experience as a classically trained pianist, songwriter, and keyboardist in different genres of music have given me the ability to improvise and experiment with visual mediums. Sometimes a journal entry becomes a painting, or a listserv discussion leads to the creation of a video.Filipino artist Manuel Ocampo said, "Identity is your worst enemy." My work reflects on identity and the search for what it means to be "American". It explores what racism means in America, and highlights how the forces of racism, patriarchy and imperialism affect the Filipina-American's relationship to herself, and her sexuality. It examines queerness and how Filipina-Americans perceive themselves from one generation to the next. Even though identity might be our worst enemy, it reveals our quest for who we are.

• # Episodes

  4 episodes

• Rating

  TV-UN