Born in the Philippines, Ria spent her earliest years surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and constant gatherings filled with noise, affection, and story. Her parents and older brother had immigrated to the United States shortly after her first birthday, and she grew up hearing about them — how much she was loved, how much she was missed, and how one day they would reunite. She lived inside that promise.
She remembers the separation from her Motherland vividly — not only as an event, but as a feeling. Her childhood was full, yet threaded with anticipation. At five years old, she boarded a plane only with a relative she barely knew, excited to join her parents and brother in America. But she was still a child, not fully aware of what goodbye meant, or how leaving one home to gain another could quietly divide a sense of belonging.
Her survival through separation and migration was nurtured by kapwa — the Filipino understanding of shared humanity and collective care. Even as a child, she instinctively absorbed the love and protection of her extended family in the Philippines, who cared for her in the best ways they knew. That embodied knowing — the quiet understanding that “we are all in it together” — carried her across the world and through displacement.
Those early experiences imprinted deeply. Memory became sensory and story-like, shaped by love spoken aloud, by absence, by repetition, and by transition. Her work emerges from that early split between here and there, before and after.
Through painting, she honors what formed her. By recreating these images, she also honors herself and her family, asserting the dignity, love, and value of her identity, even in the face of ignorance or racism. Each brushstroke transforms early vulnerability into conscious presence and resilience. Her paintings are not acts of nostalgia, but gestures of reverence — affirmations of origin, survival, and shared humanity.
BFA, School of Visual Arts, NYC Based in NYC e: 88ria88@gmail.com
