2023 Filipino American Visual Arts in Review: An ArtsiLog
/Thankfully, the art scene is now buzzing, and 2023 saw Filipino Americans taking the spotlight in solo and group exhibitions across the country. From museums to foundations, public art to gallery displays, and yes, even art hanging on closet doors – I've got the scoop. Check out my (West Coast-centric) list, log and ArtsiLog of 2023 Filipino American (Fil Am) Visual Arts events in the U.S., featuring over 45 links to Fil Am artists, curators, and their shows. The best part: many of these exhibitions are still running strong, extending into mid-2024. Dive into the visual feast.
Solo Exhibitions
Pacita Abad, If My Friends Could See Me Now, 1991; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Peggy Guggenheim (courtesy: Pacita Abad Art Estate | Photo: Don Ross)
● The biggest show is Pacita Abad, a retrospective that opened first at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, (4.15-9.3.2023) and is now on at the SFMOMA, San Francisco (10.21.23-1.28.24). "Featuring more than 40 major works, including many rarely seen by the public, this exhibition is the most significant U.S. presentation of the artist…whose vibrant and inventive practice generated thousands of daring artworks and whose themes are as urgent today as they were two decades ago.” Get the sumptuous hardcover book Pacita Abad published for the exhibition.
Paul Pfeiffer, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (30), 2015, digital C-print on Fujiflex, 56 11/16 x 78 3/4 x 2 3/4 in. (144 x 200 x 7 cm). © Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (Photo from Geffen MOCA website)
● The next must-see is Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles (11.12.23-6.16.24). “From era-defining early videos to recent, genre-breaking works in photography, installation, and sculpture, the exhibition brings together more than thirty works spanning Pfeiffer’s career, establishing him as one of today's most influential artists.” Pfeiffer has my vote as the most significant Fil Am artist in the U.S. today. Read Juliana Halpert’s review here. While we wait for the catalog, out in Feb 2024, check out these two Art21 videos on the artist.
Other Fil Am artists with solo shows in 2023 include:
Blind Spot: Stephanie Syjuco installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan
State University, 2023. (Photo: Eat Pomegranate Photography)
● Stephanie Syjuco ,with Blind Spot at MSU Broad Art Museum, Michigan, (2.4.23-7.23.23), “questions the ways that objects and collections are used by institutions to narrate history. By researching and uncovering hidden or erased histories, the artist prompts us to think more deeply about our own blind spots.” Syjuco is also included in important museum shows on through 2024: "Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility," at The Guggenheim Museum, New York, (10.20.23-4.7.24) and "Don't Forget to Call Your Mother," The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (12.18.23-9.15.24). Her monograph Stephanie Syjuco: The Unruly Archive, out in April 2024, can be preordered from Radius books.
Maia Cruz Palileo, Wild Flowers. © Maia Cruz Palileo
● Maia Cruz Palileo with Days Later, Down River at the Cummer Museum, Jacksonville, FL (10.11.23-12.30.23). A winner of this year’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition on the best of American Portraiture, her portrait was included in the Orlando Museum of Art and is now at the Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina (11. 2.23-1.21.24). The San Jose Museum of Art acquired one of her works, A Point Stretched: Views on Time (11.4.23-7.9.24) Also out this year is Maia’s beautifully designed first book, Long Kwento available from publisher, Sming Sming Books
Patrick Martinez installation at ICASF. (Photo courtesy ICASF website)
• Patrick Martinez presented Ghost Land at ICASF, San Francisco, (12.23.23-1.7.24)
a collection of his massive works: “excavating overlapping histories embedded in specific materials, he exposes complicated truths behind the romanticization of California.” I followed Martinez for years not realizing he was part Filipino until I saw the Balikbayan box on his mural. His works are also included in Singular Views: Los Angeles at the Rubell Museum, Miami (12.4.23-10.20.24)
Photo courtesy of Matt Manalo
• Matt Manalo solo show Philippine-Made at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (2.11.23-5.13.2023) featured “autobiographical…self-reflective sculptures made from air-dry clay, bamboo, and plant materials” ); Manalo also participated in Two-Eyed Seeing: Contemporaneous Pasts and Futures at the Blaffer Art Museum, Houston (12.9.23-12.17. 2023).
Installation view of Jenifer Wofford Comfort Room at Stanford University (Photo by ©O.M.France Viana)
• Jenifer K Wofford staged Comfort Room at the Coulter Gallery at Stanford University (9.26.23-12.8.23). Beginning as a solo exhibition, students later added their own works to this interactive installation, reinterpreting the term. Her public art mural, Pattern Recognition at the Asian Art Museum, was up until Aug.2023.
Johanna Poethig, installation Ungkat-Shell Games. Photo courtesy of the artist.
● Johanna Poethig mounted Ungkat-Shell Games at the Luggage Gallery (12.10.22-1.28.23). Shell Games are about “a confidence trick, a conjuring, … views of empire, legitimacy and connection weave through this body of work.” Her work, including a Larry Itliong portrait, is included in Judy Baca’s The Great Wall of Los Angeles by Jeffrey Deitch Gallery and LACMA, Los Angeles (5.20-8.19.23).
Fatima Ronquillo, Crowned Nun with Marmoset (Image & Loan Courtesy of Helen Shumway)
• Fatima Ronquillo, an amazing self-taught Santa Fe artist, presented her allegorical portraiture depicting heroes and heroines at Recollected: Portraits of Enchantment at the Millicent Rogers Museum, Taos, New Mexico (6.30.23-9.24.24). A catalog accompanies the exhibition.
Camille Hoffman at See and Missed, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art. Photo by Stephen Heraldo.
• Camille Hoffman, whose immersive installation See and Missed at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art was one of the best shows last year, presented Soft Gaze as featured artist for 2023 Trail Mix, part of the BIFA annual festival in Colorado. (8.11.23-9.4.23)
● Ricardo Ocreto Alvarado (1942-2018) was one of the earliest Filipino American photographers. Rare images of multicultural communities in the SF Bay Area during the 1940s and ‘50s were discovered by his daughter Janet Alvarado, who continues to steward his legacy through The Alvarado Project. His photo archive was acquired by Stanford University and selections were displayed at the Green Library (5.2023). Happily, the archive is searchable online.
Group Show
Other Fil Am artists in group shows at museums and foundations and nonprofit galleries include:
● HATAK was seminal as perhaps the first online collaboration of Fil Am artist-run spaces, curated by Nica Aquino of Mata Art Gallery along with Ged Merino, Matt Manalo, Mic Boekelmann, Topaz Arts, and others, and extended into 2023 (10.1.22-1.30.23). (For a mini-directory of Filipino American Artist-Run Spaces see my Salo-SALA.)
Bay Area Now 9 (10.6.23-5.5.24). No less than three Fil Am artists are included in YBCA, San Francisco’s signature triennial exhibition. (Nine artists, writers, and activists were also included in 2023 YBCA 100.) Artists in Bay Area Now 9 are:
Michael Arcega, Trophy Room , Installation view of Bay Area Now 9. Courtesy Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (Photograph by Charlie Villyard)
• Michael Arcega presents Trophy Room, a collection of items reflecting the Nacirema; champoy offers an invitation for overlapping communities to “tend bangka” as stewards; his art vehicle/rolling karaoke machine crafted with Paolo Asuncion TNT Traysikel continued to make the rounds of art festivals and events
Charlene Tan at YBCA. Photo courtesy of the artist.
• Charlene Tan crafts a “large curtain made from nylon scrim containing multiple stands of shiny mylar that looked stunning in the mid-morning light,”; and also had works at Fight and Flight: Crafting a Bay Area Life at the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco, (4.15.23-9.10.23), and in Naming Our Time at The Berkeley Art Center (10.27.23-1.13.24)
• champoy offers an invitation to “tend bangka” as stewards of land and water.
Catherine Wagner in installation: What Has Been and What Could Be, BAMFA. Photo courtesy of the artist.
• Catherine Wagner was in What are words worth? (6.16.23-9.2.23) McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, and is currently on view in What Has Been and What Could Be: The BAMPFA Collection, Berkeley (6.7.23-7.7.24). Her public art of granite etched photos at the Moscone Subway Station in San Francisco needs to be included in the map of SOMA Pilipinas landmarks.
Erina Alejo installation at Berkeley Art Center (Photo © O.M.France Viana)
• Erina Alejo is showing at Naming Our Time at The Berkeley Art Center (10.27.23-1.13.24); she is a 2023 Lucas Artist Fellow at Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga
Artist Residences
Fil Am artists who participated in residencies culminating in solo or group shows include:
● Avant-garde sound artist and instrument sculptor, Alex Abalos at the Audium, San Francisco (2023 cohort).
● Sherwin Rio at Capp Street Project, San Francisco (12.3.22-4.29.23) interventions “provide alternative, inverse ways of experiencing a house (the David Ireland house)—indebted to the past, the unseen, and the underground.”
● Robin Birdd David and the Macrowaves collective at Recology, San Francisco, aimed to “make sense of the intergenerational stories of movement and transition held in the objects we inherit.”
● Lani Asuncion fellowship at Kala in Berkeley (7.20.23-9.22.23).
● Conceptual artist and educator Agelio Batle (5.1.23-7.22.23) at SFArtsEd, San Francisco.
● Bennie Flores Ansell completed a 2023 residency at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston.
● Balay Kreative studios incubates rotating artists year round.
Ramon Abad and Melanie Elvena, at Mabuhay Friend, at SFArts Ed. Photo © O.M.France Viana
● Puppeteer extraordinaire Ramon Abad (10.7.23-11.18.23) at SFArtsEd, San Francisco.
Public Art
Hueman mural installation SOMA, courtesy of the artist.
● Allison Hueman, who redesigned the Golden State Warriors jersey, painted “Our Home of Sampaguita and Dahlias” on the facade of the Hillsdale Hotel in SOMA.
Johanna Poethig’s mural on the set of Here Lies Love musical, Broadway. Photo courtesy of the artist.
● Johanna Poethig installed Resilient City at San Jose Fire Department ,and an image of her LAKAS SAMBAYANAN: People Power Mural painted in 1986 was used as a set for the “Here Lies Love” musical on Imelda Marcos in Broadway, reaching a different audience.
• Mel Vera Cruz and Dee Jae Pa’este installed murals at the Yerba Buena gardens.
Gallery Shows
Gallery shows of Fil Am artists not previously mentioned include:
• The New York outpost of the Philippine gallery Silverlens, which shows mainly Philippine-based artists, exhibited two Filipino American artists, Carlos Villa and Leo Valledor (9.7.23-11.4.23), and featured Carlos Villa at their Frieze New York art fair booth.
• Emily Cheng, who showed at the Shanghai Biennial, presented Intercodex at Villegeone art in NY (12.7.23-10.28.23)
• Lordy Rodriguez latest maps were on view at Hosfelt Gallery (7.8.23-8.28.23)
• On the popup scene, John Yoyogi Fortes showed with the Tambayan Collective at You Are Welcome at the 3110 Gallery, Los Angeles (8.18-19.23)
● Mother and son team May and Mik Gaspay showed their fabric art at The Arts at CIIS (10/2/23-12.15.23)
Fil Am Curatorial Highlights
Exhibitions mounted by Fil Am curators with at least one Fil Am artist featured include:
● Artist Rea Lynn de Guzman (who also created a street mural for SOMCAN’s Slow Streets) curated Wander Woman 3 at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco (1.18.23-4.16.23) with Fil Am artists Cherisse Alcantara, Jenifer Wofford and myself.
● Theo Gonzalves advised on Sound Check! The Museum That We Make, at the Wing Luke Museum, Seattle which features Filipino American musicians Joe Bataan and the Fanny band founders, the Millington sisters. (10.15.23-9.14.24).
● PJ Gubatina Policarpio curated Notes on Cultural Evidence at Slash, SF (1.24.-8.19.2023) based on Fil Am poet Catalina Cariaga’s poetry collection, with artist Cristine Blanco among others.
“Wachinangga” by Mel Vera Cruz at the North Fork Arts Projects closet door gallery (Photo courtesy North Fork Arts projects)
● And to end with a smile, esteemed poet, writer, and inventor of the Haynaku, Eileen Tabios curates great shows on the doors of her closet, (literally!) including Rea Lynn de Guzman, Mel Vera Cruz, and Ulysess Duterte Jr.
That’s the roundup – if I overlooked anything, let us know in the comments below.
Big kudos to all the artists and curators for serving up a visual feast, and ube toasts to the museums and institutions promoting Filipino American art!
O.M. France Viana is a Bay Area visual artist, art historian, curator, writer, and mythologist. She/they/siya serves as Commissioner of the Asian Art Museum.
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