My work explores the condition of shifting space between cultures, identities, and histories that defines the migrant experience. Through the lens of pre- and post-colonial Philippines, I engage with historic paintings and murals as points of departure, using them as frictional surfaces against which contemporary social issues can be reimagined. I am interested in how the past, especially a past shaped by colonial power, continues to haunt and shape the present.
In my paintings, figurative elements emerge and dissolve into abstraction. I use spontaneous, continuous lines to fracture the space, interrupting any sense of stability and creating a visual language of movement, displacement, and fluid identity. These shifting boundaries mirror my lived experience as someone who occupies multiple cultural worlds yet is not fully contained by any of them.
My palette is rooted in memory. I choose colors that remind me of the Philippines, pinks, reds, blues, purples, ochres. These tones carry emotional and atmospheric weight. Color becomes both anchor and connector, bridging the figurative and abstract elements and creating a visual “third space,” a concept drawn from Homi Bhabha's The Location of Culture. This third space is where hybridity becomes generative, where identities overlap, collide, and recombine into new forms.
By navigating the tension between figuration and abstraction, between history and the present, and between the personal and the political, my work aims to articulate a visual language of otherness that is not marginal but expansive. It is a reclaiming of space. A rewriting of origin. A way to make visible the fluid, layered, and often uncomfortable realities of postcolonial psyche.
Education
2025 - 2026 MA Painting Royal College of Art. London
2024 - 2025 PG Diploma Art and Design/Fine Art Royal College of Art. London
2024 - 2025 Diploma in History of Art ca.1330-1500 University of Oxford. Oxford
2023 - 2024 PDiploma in Figurative Painting The Heatherley School of Fine Art. London
2020 - 2022 PGDiploma in Portraiture The Heatherley School of Fine Art . London
Solo shows and Group Exhibitions
2025 Group Show XCHG 22 Bishopsgate, London, UK
2024 Graduate Exhibition The Heatherley School of Fine Art, London, UK
2022 Graduate Exhibition The Heatherley School of Fine Art, London, UK
2019 Solo Show Makati, Philippines
2018 Group Show Berlin, Germany
2016 Group Show London, UK
2015 Group Show Milan, Italy
2014 Group Show London, UK
2013 Solo Show The Manila Hotel, Philippines
2013 Group show New York, USA
2012 Group Show Altro Mondo Gallery. Makati, Philippines
2012 Joint Exhibition Gallerie Anna. Manila, Philippines