2021
Digital print

Wish You Were Her is a series of photographs documenting the first iteration of the brooms used in My Filipino Baby. This initial study retains “Export Quality” on the broom handle, which is commonly found on walis tambo sold in tourist shops in the Philippines. I wanted to place the walis tambo in context with prevalent American landmarks in Washington, DC. I saw the broom somewhat like a body, taking tourist photos around the United States capital. Because I saw this piece as not only tied to Filipina identity but also to the mechanisms of US imperial militarism and state-sponsored control, I wanted to juxtapose it against spaces entangled with these systems.

2021
Digital print

2021
Digital print

2021
Digital print

2023 
Human hair, plastic rattan, wood, and wire.

When I think of how Filipina identity and commerce intersect, I think of the sustained narratives around sexual labor and exploitation of exoticized brown female bodies. Mail-order brides, military-controlled sex workers, and domestic helpers are constantly under threat of abuse. Philippine news and media in the 1980s and 1990s were rife with stories of exploited Filipinas abroad and this has embedded a certain anxiety over my body long before I lived outside of the Philippines. Now that I’ve spent most of my life in the United States, I am constantly aware that my body is minimized in these same ways. I wanted to embody these internal conflicts in My Filipino Baby with the use of hair for the bristles. The specific broom I recreate is called a “walis tambo”, which are brooms used indoors in the Philippines.

The text on the broom handles read as follows:

"She’s my darling Filipino Baby
She’s my treasure and my pet
Her teeth are bright and pearly
And her hair is black as jet"

- Chorus from "Ma Filipino Babe (1898)" by Charles Kassell Harris

First written in 1899 after the Spanish-American War, “My Filipino Baby” is a song about an African-American sailor who falls in love with a Filipina “maiden” while stationed in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. He later whisks her away, marrying her on the ship back to America. Three white country singers later re-recorded the song, and the lyrics were altered to take out the references to a “colored sailor” and a “black-faced Filipina girl.” For this piece, I chose to use the newer version as its history of omission seemed most befitting to the themes of erasure within the series.

2023
Human hair, plastic rattan, wood, and wire.

Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Photographer: David Sloan

2025
Human hair, plastic rattan, wood, and wire.

Value Studies, Wil Aballe Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Photographer: David Sloan

2025
Human hair, plastic rattan, wood, and wire.

Value Studies, Wil Aballe Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Photographer: David Sloan

2025
Human hair, plastic rattan, wood, and wire.

Value Studies, Wil Aballe Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Photographer: David Sloan