My work is an archive of what remains. It is built on a foundation of Kapwa—a Filipino understanding of collective care—that sustained me during my first five years in the Philippines while I awaited a reunion with my family in America. That early experience of being between homes taught me to find anchors in the sensory: the specific quality of tropical light, the crinkle of a snack wrapper or the familiar rhythm of a gathering.
My earliest years were filled with the noise and affection of an extended family yet my childhood was threaded with anticipation. At age five, I boarded a plane with a relative I barely knew, unaware of how leaving one home to gain another could quietly divide a sense of belonging. This separation from my motherland was not just an event, but a sensory feeling shaped by absence and transition. These experiences imprinted deeply, turning memory into a story-like map that guides my work today.
My paintings are a form of investigative therapy. I collect the ingredients of a chaotic world—transient pop ephemera, sidewalk litter and stream-of-consciousness doodles—and organize them into cohesive compositions. I’m fascinated by the life cycle of things, from the commercial gloss of packaging to the organic collapse of a perishable jack-o'-lantern. By meticulously rendering these discarded fragments, I’m asserting the dignity of my own history. I don’t always know why I am driven to make these things, but through it I can freeze the fleeting, turning the garbage of our environment and the ghosts of my past into permanent anchors of survival and self-discovery.
BFA, School of Visual Arts, NYC Based in NYC e: 88ria88@gmail.com
