Thea Canlas

Work samples

Export Quality (Value Studies: Uniforms)

2023
Machine embroidered piña cloth, white sand, sugar, pearls, and human teeth

Available for Purchase

For preview or sales inquiries, please contact Wil Aballe, [email protected]
Flag Studies (Value Studies Series)

2023

Machine embroidered piña cloth, traditional textiles from different parts of the Philippines, and digitally printed polyester satin.
My Name is Maria, Too. (Installation #2)

2025
Skin whitening soap

Available for Purchase
My Filipino Baby (Value Studies Series)

Detail of last broom of four.

2023
Human hair, plastic rattan, wood, and wire

"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

Available for Purchase

For preview or sales inquiries, please contact Wil Aballe, [email protected]

About Thea

Thea Canlas is a Filipina-American artist whose conceptual, research-driven work explores the entanglements of diasporic Philippine identity through sculptural objects, textiles, installations, and digital media. Her current body of work, Value Studies, traces how colonial economies and contemporary racial capitalism have impacted our perceptions of collective and individual human value.

Thea received her BFA in Fibers from the… more

View Thea's Resume

Export Quality (Value Studies: Uniforms)

Export Quality (Value Studies: Uniforms)
2023
Machine embroidered piña cloth, white sand, sugar, pearls, and human teeth.

Value Studies is a series of works looking at the entanglements of globalized economies, racial capitalism, post-colonial statecraft, and the curation of cultural value, through the lens of Filipino transnational identity. Export Quality (Value Studies: Uniforms) is an ongoing series of "ghostly" uniforms that traces the connections between Spanish colonial era exports, national identity, and modern labor exploitation of Filipino overseas contract workers.

Overseas contract workers (OCWs), also known as overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), are Philippine nationals who work abroad, under contract, for a set period. The Philippines has one of the largest populations of OCWs—a largely unseen labor force throughout the world. The uniforms in this installation—each for the most common contract work taken on by OFWs (domestic work and general labor on shipping boats)—are rendered ghostly by the use of piña cloth. I chose piña cloth as it is intrinsically tied to the Philippines’ colonization by the Spanish, who introduced the pineapple plant to the islands as a cash crop. Piña is still used for the Philippines’ designated “national costume,” the Barong Tagalog and Baro’t Saya. The embroidery on the uniforms is based on embroidery used in these "costumes." Underneath the two uniforms is a mixture of white sand, sugar, pearls, and human teeth. They represent major exports from the Philippines, including human labor.

Export Quality (Value Studies: Uniforms) Installation #1

Export Quality (Value Studies: Uniforms)
2023
Machine embroidered piña cloth, white sand, sugar, pearls, and human teeth.

Available for Purchase

Email
Detail of Uniforms (Value Studies Series) Installation #1
Detail of Uniforms (Value Studies Series) Installation #1
Detail of Uniforms (Value Studies Series) Installation #1
Detail of Uniforms (Value Studies Series) Installation #1
Uniform Studies Installation #1 (Installation View)
Detail of Uniforms (Value Studies Series) Installation #1
Uniforms (Value Studies Series) Installation #2

2025
Machine-embroidered piña cloth
Value Studies, Wil Aballe Art Gallery
Photographer: David Sloan

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]

My Name Is Maria, Too.

My Name Is Maria, Too.
2023-2025
Skin whitening soap

I have been interested in how religion, used as a tool for "civilizing" native populations, also reinforced ideas about race and gender. Especially for former Spanish colonies like the Philippines still practicing Catholicism, ideas of piety and virginal purity are perpetuated through the reverence of the Virgin Mary.

My Name is Maria, Too. (Installation #2)

2025
Wil Aballe Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]
My Name is Maria, Too. (Installation #2)

2025
Wil Aballe Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]
Detail of My Name is Maria, Too. (Installation #2)
My Name is Maria, Too. (Installation #1)

My Name is Maria, Too. (Installation #1)
2023
Skin whitening soap
Emily Carr University of Art & Design
Photography by David Sloan
The first installation of My Name is Maria, Too has the figures arranged by hue. Because of the skin whitening agent in the soap mixture, the figures yellow over time.

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]
Detail of My Name is Maria, Too. (Installation #1)

My Name is Maria, Too. (Installation #1)
2023
Skin whitening soap
Emily Carr University of Art & Design
Photography by David Sloan
The first installation of My Name is Maria, Too has the figures arranged by hue. Because of the skin whitening agent in the soap mixture, the figures yellow over time.

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]

Flag Studies

Flag Studies is a meditation on statecraft and how Philippine national identity is invented and imagined. This series also aims to critique the state-sanctioned "imaginings" of Philippine national identity, its ties to American imperial rule, and how its contemporary articulations evolve within the Philippine diaspora. For these studies, I use different types of fabric from all over the Philippines, along with imagery from various sources. The material histories of the textiles are significant in conveying the complexity and overlaps within national identity and histories of colonial commodification. The use of woven textiles from various parts of the Philippines is both a way to try to represent the myriad of indigenous communities largely unseen and show how the textiles have morphed for tourist consumption. Each flag speaks as a gesture or tangent, the collective expression fluctuates over time as new flags are added or reworked.

Flag Studies Installation #1

Flag Studies Installation #1
2023
Machine embroidered piña cloth, traditional textiles from different parts of the Philippines, and digitally printed polyester satin.
Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Photographer: David Sloan

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]
Installation view of "Flag Studies (Value Studies Series) Installation #1"

Flag Studies Installation #1. 2023.
Machine embroidered piña cloth, traditional textiles from different parts of the Philippines, and digitally printed polyester satin.
Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Photographer: David Sloan
Flag Studies Installation #2

Machine embroidered piña cloth, traditional textiles from different parts of the Philippines, and digitally printed polyester satin.
2024
Sondheim Semifinalist Art Prize Exhibition, Decker Gallery, Baltimore, MD
Photographer: David Sloan

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]
Flag Studies Installation #3
Flag Studies Installation #3 (Detail)
Flag Studies Installation #3 (Detail View)

Broom Studies

In the Philippines, the term "Export Quality" denotes that a product is produced with more care and made with better ingredients simply because it's created for a foreign consumer. It is often woven into the handles of colorful decorative versions of tiger grass brooms known as "walis tambo", created for tourist shops all over the Philippines. This piece is a meditation on Philippine feminine identity in the Western imagination and its entanglements with exploited gendered labor and exoticized desire. I recreated the walis tambo and exchanged the bristles with long black human hair, imitating the look and style of hair associated with essentialized Asian feminine identity in the west.

Shown here are the different iterations of these brooms in various studies made since 2021.

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC #3 (Wish You Were Her series)

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.

Available for Purchase

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Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC (Wish You Were Her series)

2021
Digital print

Available for Purchase

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National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC #1 (Wish You Were Her series)

2021
Digital print

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC #2 (Wish You Were Her series)

2021
Digital print

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]
My Filipino Baby (Value Studies Series) Installation #1

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.

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]
Detail view of My Filipino Baby (Value Studies Series) Installation #1

2023
Human hair, plastic rattan, wood, and wire.
Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Photographer: David Sloan
My Filipino Baby (Value Studies Series) Installation #2

2025
Human hair, plastic rattan, wood, and wire.
Value Studies, Wil Aballe Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Photographer: David Sloan

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]
Detail of My Filipino Baby (Value Studies Series) Installation #2

2025
Human hair, plastic rattan, wood, and wire.
Value Studies, Wil Aballe Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Photographer: David Sloan

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]
Detail view of My Filipino Baby (Value Studies Series) Installation #2

2025
Human hair, plastic rattan, wood, and wire.
Value Studies, Wil Aballe Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Photographer: David Sloan

Available for Purchase

Email [email protected]

Still Life (Longing) Series

Still Life (Longing)
2022
Commercial refrigerator containing goods purchased at Baltimore H-Mart (rambutan, bangus, green papaya, jackfruit, can of corned beef, can of Tocino Spam, banana heart, mangoes, calabaza, eggplants, sugar canes, ampalaya, and banana leaves)

In "Still Life: Longing", I wanted to create a series of still lives informed by the gaze of displacement and yearning for home. I also wanted to emphasize how early colonial economies still inform modern global foodways by mimicking the look of 16th-18th European still lives that featured products from colonies and were prized for their exotic nature, novelty, and rarity. The selection of objects are determined by whichever city I am in (in this case, Baltimore) and buy what I can from what is locally available. I specifically chose fruits, vegetables, and other goods that speak to what I miss from the Philippines. The selection also represents the extent of availability of Philippine goods within a certain area. Some goods, like corned beef and Tocino Spam, allude to outside culinary influences and are not Philippine-made but their significance to the community and my ideation of the Philippines is enough to be included. It also recalls historical entanglements with the United States as canned meat was introduced to the Philippines in the 1940s when US troops were fighting Japanese forces during World War 2.

Still Life (Longing): Baltimore Installation #2

2025
Custom digitally printed tablecloth and wallpaper; still life containing goods purchased from Baltimore City Asian food stores: mangoes, taro root, assorted Filipino chips, Tocino Spam, Toyomansi, spiced vinegar, haw flakes, eggplants, Dutch sugar cookies, canned liver pate, fake hotdogs on skewers with marshmallows, White Rabbit candy, locally sourced wooden food display.
EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS, Station North, Baltimore, MD.
Photographer: David Sloan
Detail of Still Life (Longing) Installation #2 - Baltimore City
Still Life (Longing) Installation #3 - Baltimore City/Motor House

2025
Digitally printed tablecloth and wallpaper. Still life with cinder blocks containing goods purchased from Baltimore City Asian food stores: mangoes, chilis, chayote, assorted Filipino chips, spiced vinegar, haw flakes, canned liver pate, biscocho, White Rabbit candy, and more. Cafe tables set up with paper and tempera paint sticks. Frames used for displaying finished still lives.
Exceeds Expectations, Asia North, Baltimore, MD
Photographer: David Sloan
This iteration of Still Life (Longing) invites visitors to draw the still life on display. Finished still lives are then displayed on the provided frames hung on the wall. A sip and paint event taking place in the installation was also part of the exhibition programming.
Detail of Still Life (Longing) Installation #3 - Baltimore City/Motor House
Still Life (Longing) Installation #4 - Baltimore City/The Club Car

2025
Detail of Still Life (Longing) Installation #4 - Baltimore City/The Club Car
Detail of Still Life (Longing) Installation #4 - Baltimore City/The Club Car
Detail of Still Life (Longing) Installation #4 - Baltimore City/The Club Car
Mock-up for Installation of "Still Life: Longing"

Mock-up for Installation of "Still Life: Longing"
Still Life: Longing (Detail)

2022
Commercial refrigerator containing goods purchased at Baltimore H-Mart (rambutan, bangus, green papaya, jackfruit, can of corned beef, can of Tocino Spam, banana heart, mangoes, calabaza, eggplants, sugar canes, ampalaya, and banana leaves)

Available for Purchase

Digital print available for purchase. Email [email protected]

Multo (Apparitions) Series / Maalaala Mo Kaya

Overseas contract workers (OCWs), also known as overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), are Philippine citizens who work abroad, under contract, for a set amount of time. These jobs offer an opportunity for higher wages from countries due to favorable exchange rates when spent in the Philippines. In addition, the Philippine government has encouraged this exportation of labor with incentives for OFWs (discount housing, etc.), thus creating one of the biggest diaspora populations today at around 11 million.

The highest proportion of these workers are in domestic service, largely taken on by women, accounting for roughly a quarter of all OFWs. Though the Philippine government hail OFWs as “mga bagong bayani” (new heroes), largely due to their economic contribution to the Philippine economy, these positions are rife with abuse and exploitation.

In Value Studies: Multo (Apparitions), I wanted to highlight the invisibility of this labor force and question how we got to this moment of large-scale exportation of Philippine labor. Additionally, the physical absence of OFWs from their own homes and families in such a large scale is a kind of lingering loss that permeates through those left behind—creating another kind of "haunting". To create the images, I researched hours of YouTube content produced by OFWs in domestic service. Several OFWs would film themselves working, illuminating the extent of their labor for others wanting to become OFWs. I was able to gather enough clips of OFWs working in regions with the largest concentrations of OFWs in domestic service to create this series. Using a separate digital camera, I made these “ghostly apparitions” by doing a slow exposure of the Youtube videos.

Maalaala Mo Kaya? (Would You Remember?)

2025

Available for Purchase

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Bedroom (Kuwait)

2022
Digital print from Youtube video by EARLY LABLAB VLOGS

Available for Purchase

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Dining Room (Jordan)
Living Room (Hong Kong)
Bathroom (UAE)

Material Studies

In my research-based practice, material and process choice is informed by the histories and subjects I build each series around. I like to then experiment with both in as many ways as I can to inform how a work comes together. Shown here are various material studies that are in progress or studies that have lead to a more "finished" pieces.

Value Study: Balikbayan

Value Study: Balikbayan 2022 White sand, pearls, teeth, and air bubble void fill
Value Study: Buhok/Bunot

Value Study: Buhok/Bunot 2022 Coconut husks, hair, white sand, pearls, and teeth
Value Study: Coconut (Detail)

Value Study: Buhok/Bunot (detail) 2022 Coconut husks, hair, white sand, pearls, and teeth
Material Studies: Cement blocks, hair, fabric, and bamboo

2024
Cement blocks, hair, fabric, and bamboo
Material Studies: Cement blocks and hair

2024
Cement blocks and hair