Over the weekend, Los Angeles City College’s VAMA Gallery played host to a new exhibition spotlighting the work of emerging Filipino artists. Curated by Edmund Arevalo, “Tambayan” narrates the timelines and perspectives in the Filipino diaspora, while questioning issues of cultural assimilation, traditions, and surveillance.
Mapped across a variety of disciplines, from painting, sculpture, to video installations, the exhibition aims to celebrate Filipino-American heritage, while disrupting oppressive systems, and uplifting Filipino and BIPOC communities. For Arévalo, who grew up in between Southern California and the Philippines, art is a way for him retrace his childhood memories and reclaim a sense of pride in his cultural identity.
In a past statement, Arevalo explained:
“It can be challenging because integration pulls the work like tug of war, and it is difficult to separate and determine which one I belong to because I feel I never belong to any. The duality of having experienced both sides of the fence express the different mediums. Colors compose my emotions of satisfaction, rejoice, confusion, and loneliness. I attempt to blend layers adding and removing images, peeling back layers re-writing my own history.”
