The Flowers Video 1920 x 1080, 2021
The Flower/Artist Statement
"Who am I?", and "Why am I?" are common questions I tend to explore within my practice. As a transgender student, exploring scholarly topics often becomes a practice of self-defence; an exploration of my positionality within the context of academia and the world at large. My motivation in this respect comes from the politicization of my body, and the taboo inherent to my being. My practice, in essence, is a discovery of the self:
As a Filipina woman. As a Canadian. As a trans-woman.
Artist Biography
I was born in Marikina, Philippines and moved to Canada at a young age. I never learned to speak my native language. I’d known that something was wrong in my gender presentation since I was around five. I did my best to push those feelings away, and for the next twenty years of my life I would oscillate between rage and nothing at all. By the time I turned twenty-six I had already begun to learn to feel again. In the process, however, I would go on to lose my friends, and family.