About the exhibition:

This exhibition brings together 9 local Filipino artists from the Philadelphia/New Jersey region whose work is connected by shared themes of identity and community care. By exploring different aspects of our relationship with the Philippines and the United States, examining and reclaiming our own sense of self, and reconnecting with cultural roots, these artists shed light on the diverse experiences within the Filipino community. From contemporary aesthetics to traditional expressions, Kapwa offers a glimpse into the rich tapestry of perspectives that make up our shared human experience.

Celebrate those shared human experiences with KAPWA’s Community Day Saturday, October 21 from 12pm-4pm! Join KAPWA’s Filipino artists at Palumbo Park (723 Catharine St) for an afternoon of food, performance, and community care. 

“Kapwa is a recognition of a shared identity, an inner self, shared with others. This Filipino linguistic unity of the self and the other is unique and unlike in most modern languages. Why? Because implied in such inclusiveness is the moral obligation to treat one another as equal fellow human beings. If we can do this – even starting in our own family or our circle of friends – we are on the way to practice peace. We are Kapwa People.”

— Professor Virgilio Enriquez, founder of Sikolohiyang Pilipino.

The exhibition will be on view in Gallery 1 at Da Vinci Art Alliance from October 4 - October 22 with an opening reception on Saturday, October 7th from 4-7pm and a closing artist talk on Sunday, October 22 from 12-2pm.

ARTISTS FEATURED:

KT Pe Benito, Maria Dumlao, Brandon Aquino Straus, Anito Gavino & Malaya Ulan (AniMalayaWorks), Omar Buenaventura & Nicky Uy (Bahay215), and Mic Diño Boekelmann

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Bahay215 is a Philadelphia based art collaborative by Omar Buenaventura and Nicky Uy. They work on installations that explore diasporic longings and loving adaptations, negotiating the tensions of survival, joy, and growth through a mix of found objects and kapwa plants that they cultivate in their small home garden that also functions as their studio space. 

KT Pe Benito (b. 1994, Boston, MA) is a time-based arts & cultural worker, hybrid-virtual events producer, and national democratic organizer navigating access and dismantling dominator culture. Strengthening their relationship to queer lineage across borders and time zones is a practice of resistance and they utilize education to organize toward genuine Philippine liberation & sovereignty.

They have exhibited & performed internationally in Glasgow at the Gallery of Modern Art and David Dale Gallery; in New York at Abrons Arts Center, Knockdown Center, Performance Space New York, Queens Museum, and Flux Factory; in Nashville at Unrequited Leisure; in Philadelphia at Vox Populi Gallery; and virtually with Mana Contemporary and Brooklyn Rail. They were a 2019 EmergeNYC Fellow at the NYU Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics and an inaugural 2023 artist-in-residence at As Slow As Possible New York. They are featured in the Abrams publication "We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World" by Jasmin Hernandez.

KT currently serves as the 2023 Education Development Co-Officer of Anakbayan Philadelphia and as a Collective Member of Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia.

Maria Dumlao works with combined media, including film, video, animation, sound, photography, fiber and installation. Her work explores individual and collective history as mediated experience. Her work, History in RGB, combines images of history, popular culture, mythic folklore, landscapes, and creatures to propose alternatives to the systemic representations ordered by colonial narratives. Born in the Philippines, Maria immigrated to the US mainland, where she currently lives and works in the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape (Philadelphia). She received a BA in Studio Art & Art History from Rutgers College and a MFA in Studio Art at Hunter College-CUNY. Maria's work has been exhibited, screened and performed in the US and internationally. In the last couple of years, she completed a commissioned installation for Auckland Museum and Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Aotearoa New Zealand, exhibited at Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Past Present Projects, TCNJ Art Gallery, Pearlstein Gallery, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center and Michener Art Museum, and received the 2020 Leeway Transformation Award, 2022 Interlude Artist Residency and 2021 Velocity Fund. Most recent project includes a commissioned art for Truelove Seeds via Philadelphia Museum of Art community program.

Mic Diño Boekelmann (b. 1970, Quezon City, Philippines) Filipino American artist Mic Diño Boekelmann, born in Quezon City, Philippines, raised in Germany, Israel and the US. She received her BA from UC Berkeley and is the founder of The Orange Door, a multifunctional contemporary art space in Princeton, New Jersey.

Boekelmann’s visuals incorporate the Manila envelope. Her work is included in the permanent collection at Princeton University and has been shown at the Strohl Art Center at the Chautauqua Institution,  the Filipino American Contemporary Art exhibit at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, CA, the NARS Foundation on Governors Island, Princeton University, Salmagundi Club, Allied Artists of America, Princeton Public Library, and the Trenton City Museum. 

She was awarded the Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship, the Chautauqua Visual Arts Residency, the NYFA Immigrant Artist Program and is a founding member of NExSE, a Filipino American artist collective and the ERL Collective, emerging residency leaders developing nurturing systems for BIPOC artists. Boekelmann lives and works in Princeton, NJ.

Brandon Aquino Straus is an interdisciplinary artist from Philadelphia and is currently based in Manila. He is part of the LGBTQ community and the Filipino diaspora. He holds a BFA from the University of New Mexico, and also studied at L’IPAG Paris. He works as a videographer and editor.

Anito Gavino (formerly known as Ani) is a Filipinx multidisciplinary artist, movement scholar, archivist, guerilla artist, and cultural worker indigenous to the island of Panay, Philippines. Currently residing on Lenape lands/Philadelphia, Gavino directs her mother+daughter project-based company Ani/MalayaWorks, created as a platform for community-based and anti-colonial physical theater. 

As a dancer, Gavino’s highlights include dancing with Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Latin Ballet of Virginia Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers, and Ananya Dance Theater. Through her concert dance career, she was able to work with Katherine Dunham, Baba Chuck Davis, Donald McKayle, Dianne McIntyre, Alonzo King, Eleo Pomare, Antonio Hidalgo Paz, and more. As a maker, Gavino unapologetically tells embodied and digital stories as a catalyst for discourse, critical inquiry, and socio-political change. She is a recipient of the 2021 Leeway Transformation Award and Career Transition for Dancers, a grant awardee of the MAPfund 2020,2022, National Performance Network, Leeway Art for Social Change, Scribe Video Center, Velocity Fund Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Independent Public Media Fund, and more. Her works have been performed at the Barnes Foundation, Bronx Academy of Art and Dance, Painted Bride, Suzanne Roberts Theater, Dance Place, and more. Anito is also a writer for ThINKing Dance, an MFA graduate of Hollins University, and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Muhlenberg College. More information can be found on www.anigavino.com.

Malaya Ulan (Free Rain) is a fifteen-year-old Filipino-American activist, community organizer, and international artist. Malaya Ulan utilizes art mediums such as poetry, dance, film, and visual art to share and empower her voice.

She has received awards from Mighty Writers and was awarded the Gold Key for the Scholastic Art and Writing competition in Philadelphia. She has also participated in WHYY's journalism programs on full scholarship and has been an intern with Scribe Video Center’s Documentary History Project for Youth for two second years, and won the Gary Smalls Award for her work film, She Said: Art is Activism. The Film features Ursula Rucker, Anito Gavino, Elaine Holton, and Donna Grace. 

Ulan has performed in spaces such as the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Movement Research at Judson Dance Theatre, Barnes Foundation, Painted Bride, Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Outlet Dance Festival, Swarthmore University, Multicultural Education in Counseling through the Arts, and a dance concert at Festive Walk (Philippines). She performs with her mother, Anito Gavino, in a dance company, Ani/MalayaWorks. Malaya Ulan has also co-produced a collection of poetry and writings, De-Scribing, with her mother. She has released her solo poetry collection, Ulan- When My Tears Turn into Roses. 

While in the Philippines for the summer of 2023, Malaya Ulan wrote and performed her first narrative theatrical script for puppetry based on Panay-Bukidnon mythology at the Panublion Museum. Malaya Ulan is the runner-up for Youth Poet Laureate of Philadelphia 2023 and is now preparing for an upcoming show on October 7, 2023, as a featured artist of AAI’s Invasive Species project. 

ABOUT THE Curator:

Neill Catangay (b. 1993) is a Filipino interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Guam. Catangay received his BA at the University of Guam and his MFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA. Catangay embraces his cultural identity and upbringing to create work that examines decolonization as a form of care. With his multimedia practice, Catangay’s work investigates his own awareness of care, it’s meaning, and how reclaiming oneself can be crucial to understanding systems of control, productivity, and place. Through visual interpretation of research and awareness his work speculates progressive solutions for individual and collective futures.

The Michelle Angela Ortiz Track

This fellowship provides an opportunity for one artist/curator exploring international identities and personal narratives to curate a show in the Da Vinci Art Alliance gallery space. Artists in this fellowship track are challenged to push their exhibitions beyond white box gallery spaces, engaging with local communities to examine, explore and challenge Euro-centric narratives to bring us closer together while uplifting artists of color. The Michelle Angela Ortiz Fellow will work alongside DVAA's Exhibitions and Programming Director to oversee, advise, and install the exhibition.

Named for Michelle Angela Ortiz and her 20 years of work using her art to represent people and communities whose histories are often lost or co-opted. This fellowship track is for a Philadelphia based, emerging artist/curator to develop an exhibition that explores and challenges who is in charge of the narrative and why?