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 again significant in conveying the complexity and overlaps within national identity and histories of 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.

In the Philippines, the term "Export Quality" denotes that a product is produced with more care and 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. 

Also shown is a photo series called "Wish You Were Her" wherein the broom is photographed in different landmarks around Washington, DC. 

 
"Domestic work is one of the most important sources of employment for Philippine women both in the country and abroad. About one-quarter of Philippine workers deployed overseas every year enter domestic service. Concern for their safety and protection from abuse is particularly strong in the Philippines in the aftermath of the execution of Flor Contemplacion, a Philippine domestic worker in Singapore in 1995. Indeed, the hidden nature of domestic work within the private sphere of the employers’ household and the informal employment arrangements often practiced, make domestic workers particularly vulnerable to exploitation, and in some circumstances, to forced labour and trafficking." (Sayres 2)

Because of the “hidden nature” of domestic work, the abuses of power within these spheres on domestic workers is largely unknown outside of the Philippines. 

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. 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 created these “ghostly apparitions” by doing a slow exposure of the Youtube videos.

Value Studies is a series of works in various media that explore the entanglements of global capitalist systems, constructions of cultural identity, and value. I utilize the language of material histories and commodities specifically tied to the collective national identity of the Philippines. I’m also utilizing personal sensorial and material associations in my work, as a way of grounding it in an autoethnographic approach to research and art production. Chromatic value also plays a part in creating these pieces.