A Filipina’s Art Speaks for Itself
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Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza
Exhibition view: Filipino California
Forest Lawn Museum, 2024
A mask, canvas, wall mural, bronze or other object might have nothing in common except the address of a Filipino’s studio, but they all are representations of Filipino art. Pop conceptual artist Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza, 58, is taking advantage of this ongoing period of creative freedom by using Filipino materials to stretch the genre in all directions.
Despite being a beneficiary of unfettered expression, broad characterizations bother Mendoza. She considers the title “Filipino woman artist” confining. “Why does my art have to be Filipino specific? I would like to be seen simply as an artist, not as a labeled artist.”
Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza
But she doesn’t imply being an American artist who happens to be Filipino. Everything she produces explores an aspect of her tribe coming to terms with America.
Mendoza immigrated at age three with her family to the US. “I’m part of this (American) culture. I’ve consumed Western images all my life, but I try to pay attention to images that are Filipino. The Philippines is imbued with its American experience. Filipinos anywhere in the world can identify with what I’m doing because we’re so influenced by America.”
Finding Exterior Meaning in a Cardboard Box
“Cardboard Boxes” is a two-dimensional depiction of the shipping boxes that Fil-Ams use to send necessities and gifts to relatives in the Philippines. Mendoza pays homage to the boxes that serve as a lifeline between the richest nation in the free world and a group of islands whose economy wilts without remittances.
“The significance of the cardboard box is in everything these days, but Filipinos have been utilizing this form of cultural exchange much earlier with the Balikbayan box.
“I am interested in how objects like boxes have universal significance, but also have specific meanings depending on your cultural background. The boxes transport kapwa (connectedness) values for consumption.”
The tribute to beloved boxes was included in Filipino California: Art and the Filipino Diaspora exhibit that ran from April to September 2024 at the Forest Lawn Museum in Glendale, California.
Museum Director James Fishburne explains, “My vision was to exhibit Filipino and Filipino American artists working in a range of styles, and her work is extremely diverse and multifaceted in terms of style and the topics she addresses. It ranges from playful to political and from very intimate to grand. I’m a huge fan of her work.”
Chicago is the US city where Mendoza, a San Gabriel Valley resident, received inspiration from traditional Philippine objects. “Chicago’s Field Museum has a private collection of ten thousand pieces from the Philippines. When I held a knife, it fit perfectly in my hand.”
She revisits the past to make a comparison. “When I went shopping with my mother, none of the clothes fit because I’m so small. The materials in the Field collection were my scale, so they resonated with me at a physical level.”
(Anyone can see the Philippine Heritage Collection by writing to the Field Museum before they visit Chicago.)
"I am interested in how objects like boxes have universal significance, but also have specific meanings depending on your cultural background."
The Education of Ms. Mendoza
Mendoza was born in Manila. Her late father, Pedro D. Mendoza Jr., a computer analyst, came from Manila’s Tondo District. The family of her late mother, Marita Cobarrubias Mendoza, is also from Manila via Pampanga Province. She has two siblings. Her husband is the former National Public Radio and KCRW 89.5 FM radio personality, Tré Giles.
The artist’s academic training started at Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design before transferring to California State, Los Angeles for a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art. She then earned a Master of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate University. She works as an Associate Professor and Drawing Coordinator for Visual Arts Studies at Pasadena City College.
The risk of being marginalized by a large art community sustains her will to innovate. “Charged” stirred controversy that moved her out of the margins and into a heated debate. For the wallpaper art, she used images from The Forbidden Book: The Philippine-American War in Political Cartoons by Abe Ignacio, Enrique De La Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel, and Helen Toribio.
Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza
Exhibition view: Charged, AHL Foundation, NY. NY
2023
“Someone who came up to me was disturbed by the wallpaper piece because of the derogatory cartoons derived from American imperialism in the Philippines. I didn’t want to be misinterpreted or to suggest that I was using it to upset people.”
Yet, she is unapologetic. “I don’t have control over someone’s reaction. Those were the war representations that were promoted by the media. I may not agree with the cartoons, but this is part of American history.”
A Crucial Epoch for Filipino Artists
While many of Mendoza’s pieces incorporate Philippine symbolism, Filipinos represent a small fraction of her admirers.
She laments, “In the realm of artistic expression, a lot of Filipinos are comfortable with music, dance, and theater. Contemporary visual art isn’t as popular with Filipinos, so Japanese, Chinese and Korean things are the archetypes of Asian visual arts. Curators aren’t aware of what Filipinos have to offer. If we’re not seeing our work in museums, we don’t realize that there are actually materials by us.”
Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza
Growing Up Brown, 2018
plastic, foam, paper, colored pencil, ink, acrylic
4’11” x 6 diameter inches
As a teacher and working artist, Mendoza helps young Filipino artists adopt sensibilities that will impress collectors and museum curators without diluting their individual style. “It’s important to see ourselves in beautiful and practical things.”
Formidable obstacles kept minorities of her generation out of galleries. Before the Pandemic, you may have stood in line to see exhibits of Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Jackson Pollock, de Kooning, or Hockney. If you had an appetite for female artists, you communed with Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keefe, Frida Kahlo, or Judy Chicago. Museums embraced non-Asian artists because they were topical and moneymakers. A vicious circle ensued as the accepted artists on view inspired young artists with their techniques and subjects while the influence of Filipino art languished.
Filipino artists arrived too late for the colossal movements of Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and Modernism. Without receptive museums and art galleries, Mendoza and Asian American women in general had few other options than to produce art that reflects their lives and worldviews on their terms. The road is lonely in the isolationist art movement.
By determination and self-belief, Mendoza built a career and finds herself in a new era when Filipino woman artist is revered because she and her art levitate above the stagnant mainstream. She has helped open the doors for new generations of Filipino artists by proving that Filipino artists have the talent and imagination to produce something beautiful and novel.
Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza
Exhibition view: Red, White and Brown
HudsonJones Gallery, 2018
As for museumgoers, they can participate in the winnowing phase in the evolution of Filipino art. They have a voice in determining who will be the Filipino artists who join the canon of Asian American art. Given the buzz behind her art, don’t be surprised to see pieces by Mendoza in the permanent collections of great museums.
Today, Mendoza is a pioneer in transforming the ingredients of Filipino culture into meaningful objects. In October 2024, California Community Foundation validated her hard work with a Fellowship for Visual Arts. Mendoza’s art will be seen in a group show in May 2025 at the Craft Contemporary on Los Angeles’ museum row. (Sign up for the museum’s newsletter for early warning to be first at the door.)
Someday, museum directors will be on the lookout for the next Maryrose C. Mendoza. She interrogates the civilizing effect that was once the empty promise of Western colonialism.
Unsettling Colonialism
What does it mean to colonize the mind? A common example is the well-meaning Lola or Tita who belittles a child for her dark skin. Regrettably, elderly Filipinas are ill suited as pupils for teaching moments involving conquistadors who imposed western values of beauty on indigenous communities.
Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza
Love Sinks, 2024
Gouache on wood paper
America’s Founding Fathers knew better. In 1804 during a visit with third President and enslaver Thomas Jefferson, the world-renowned naturalist and German adventurer Alexander von Humboldt bemoaned the hypocrisy of the country he greatly admired for its democratic values. Andrea Wulf’s biography The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World states:
“The institution of slavery was unnatural, Humboldt said, because ‘what is against nature, is unjust, bad and without validity.” Unlike Jefferson… Humboldt insisted that there were no superior or inferior races. “No matter what nationality, color or religion, all humans came from one root. Much like plant families,” Humboldt explained, “which adapted differently to their geographical and climactic conditions but nonetheless displayed the traits of a ‘common type’, so did all members of the human race belong to one family. All men were equal, and no race was above another, because ‘all are designed for freedom’.”
How a polymath like Jefferson could play dumb is a question for another time. As the passage pertains to people of color, brown skin was a physical adaptation for the tropical climate of the Philippine islands. The sun dictated beauty standards before Spain weighed anchor. Imperialists imposed their ideals in pursuit of total domination to exploit labor and land. Filipinos attained independence though an inferiority complex is a hard remnant of colonialism that continues to hinder progress.
What can purge the subconscious of self-hatred? As products of the imagination, art has a kinship with the subconscious mind. Art that’s inspired by an independent Philippines presents new ways to define beauty in positively Filipino terms. Maryrose Mendoza is the Moses of art to lead us out of the silent oppression of our colonial past.
Anthony Maddela lives with his family in Los Angeles. He thinks this is the best time ever to interview and tell the stories of fellow Filipinos.
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