WALAY TUGPAHAY

WALAY TUGPAHAY: RESIST, REST, RAGE
Cebu Art Book Fair Poster Exhibition (Cebu, Philippines)
2025
18x24
In collaboration with Bastos Lab
Born in a capitalist, imperialist country as a second-generation Filipino-American, I struggled with disconnection from my heritage. Struggle with language barriers, Americanization, feeling like an inauthentic Filipino. I wanted to express the turbulence and catharsis of piecing together my fragmented identity.
Filipino master painter Ricarte Puruganan "wanted to challenge Filipino artists of today to pick up from our indigenous patterns and symbols for us to be able to trace the roots of the characters of the Filipinos" in order to make contemporary art that is undeniably, unapologetically FILIPINO. Stumbling across a copy from 1975 of Traditional Handicraft Art of the Philippines by Robert de los Reyes in a small bookstore in New York City sparked the catalyst to learn more about an art form that is gradually phasing out of existence due to Western cultural imperialism.
Playful gradients emulate the essence of a tapestry, a woven blanket made of graphic warps and wefts. Ifugao and Bagobo motifs are interwoven with 90s–2000s Internet webcore aesthetics, creating an eclectic amalgamation that represents the chaos of my modern Filipino-American experience.
The motifs found in handicrafts and textiles are put in a colloquial context, connecting my interpretations with my individualized experiences as a graphic designer who is active in the local art scene. The dancing men, joined together hand in hand, symbolize a village, my desperate need for community. The binitoon, a geometric star comprised of alternate colored squares, is transformed into a transparent PNG pattern, peeling back the layers of an "onion skin" in an Adobe Photoshop manner. The gray and white pixels eat away at the tapestry. I want to decolonize my mind, unlearn the harmful beliefs that were imposed on me. My cry for radical change.
The words Walay Tugpahay, digitally cross stitched—using a post-binary typeface called Crozet·t by queer type collective Bye Bye Binary—firmly grounds the piece. Despite the digital decay shredding the tapestry into threads, the dancers chant "We will resist! We will rest! We will rage!" 
It is exhausting to exist in a relentless capitalist cesspool that severs my roots, homogenizes my identity, and throws me into the machine and spits me out. I will make mistakes and fall short along the way, but I will continue to push forward with no signs of slowing down.
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