topic

Citizenship and belonging

This topic recognizes the complex, paradoxical ways in which the formal status of citizenship—legal inclusion in and recognition by a state apparatus—intersects with the desire for belonging—the feeling of being at home and welcomed by one’s fellow subjects. As Evelyn Nakano Glenn asserts in Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (Harvard University Press, 2002), “Citizenship is not just a matter of formal legal status; it is a matter of belonging, including recognition by others in the community” (52).


As Filipinos move around the world in search of work, they must negotiate competing, often contradictory demands. While the Philippine state facilitates work emigration, it simultaneously demands that diasporic Filipinos demonstrate their loyalty by exacting salary remittances as a form of patriotic duty and framing them as “national heroes." With a complicated imperial history, Filipinos' citizenship and belonging is always up for grabs and unsettled.

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Aram Han Sifuentes

b. 1986
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Aram Han Sifuentes is a fiber, social practice, and performance artist who works to claim spaces for immigrant and disenfranchised communities. Her work often revolves around skill sharing, specifically sewing techniques, to create multiethnic and intergenerational sewing circles, which become a place for empowerment, subversion and protest. Her work has been exhibited at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis, MO), Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (Chicago, IL), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago, IL), Asian Arts Initiative (Philadelphia, PA), Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum (Seoul, South Korea), and the Design Museum (London, UK).

Aram is a 2016 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, 2016 3Arts Awardee, and 2017 Sustainable Arts Foundation Awardee. She earned her BA in Art and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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  • Born: Seoul, South Korea
  • Based: Chicago, IL, USA

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Deception Pass

Kat Larson

2013 Video & performance art Variable dimensions CA+T Commissioned Work

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Kat Larson

b. 1979

Kat Larson is a Seattle-based cross-disciplinary artist. Her art practice includes printmaking, painting, small scale sculpture, performance and video. She is currently focusing on video and performative installations and exploring her body as a conduit for spiritual connections, specifically with her female ancestors whom she has tagged “BloodMuthas.” Outside of video and performance, she continues to work with striking found objects, clay, encaustics, and organic materials such as dead bees and dirt.

Photograph by Lindsay Borden.

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  • Born: Seattle, WA, USA
  • Based: Seattle, WA, USA

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Estamos contra el muro | We are against the wall

Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik

2016 Photographic documentation Courtesy of the artist

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Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik

b. 1981
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Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik is conceptual artist working with craft and food to tell the stories of migration. Sita holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Scripps College, and an M.F.A. in interdisciplinary art and an M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. Raised in Los Angeles and based in Oakland, she is Indian and Japanese Colombian American. Sita has exhibited and collaborated in the US, Holland, Ireland, Hong Kong, and Mexico. Her projects include installing curry powder in a European castle, importing artisan goods over the US-Mexico border, and leading workshops about food, migration, and memory in Hong Kong. Her most recent project, Estamos contra el muro | We are against the wall, involved the collaborative construction of a border wall made entirely of piñatas. The East Bay Express described it as "the most joyous political critique of the year."
 
Sita is also a co-founder of the People's Kitchen Collective (PKC), who were named in 2016's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ YBCA 100 list. They are recipients of the Center for Asian American Media’s (CAAM) Advocate Award and were awarded support by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation Open Spaces Program. PKC recently exhibited with For Freedoms, the first artist-run super PAC at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York and at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center's Crosslines pop-up museum. The goal of The People's Kitchen is to not only fill our stomachs but also nourish our souls, feed our minds and fuel a movement.
 
See also peopleskitchencollective.com.

Photo credit: Rachyel Magana



 

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  • Born: Los Angeles, CA, USA
  • Based: Oakland, CA, USA

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Estamos contra el muro | We are against the wall

Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik

2016 Photographic documentation Courtesy of the artist

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Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik

b. 1981
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Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik is conceptual artist working with craft and food to tell the stories of migration. Sita holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Scripps College, and an M.F.A. in interdisciplinary art and an M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. Raised in Los Angeles and based in Oakland, she is Indian and Japanese Colombian American. Sita has exhibited and collaborated in the US, Holland, Ireland, Hong Kong, and Mexico. Her projects include installing curry powder in a European castle, importing artisan goods over the US-Mexico border, and leading workshops about food, migration, and memory in Hong Kong. Her most recent project, Estamos contra el muro | We are against the wall, involved the collaborative construction of a border wall made entirely of piñatas. The East Bay Express described it as "the most joyous political critique of the year."
 
Sita is also a co-founder of the People's Kitchen Collective (PKC), who were named in 2016's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ YBCA 100 list. They are recipients of the Center for Asian American Media’s (CAAM) Advocate Award and were awarded support by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation Open Spaces Program. PKC recently exhibited with For Freedoms, the first artist-run super PAC at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York and at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center's Crosslines pop-up museum. The goal of The People's Kitchen is to not only fill our stomachs but also nourish our souls, feed our minds and fuel a movement.
 
See also peopleskitchencollective.com.

Photo credit: Rachyel Magana



 

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  • Born: Los Angeles, CA, USA
  • Based: Oakland, CA, USA

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Estamos contra el muro | We are against the wall

Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik

2016 Photographic documentation Courtesy of the artist

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Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik

b. 1981
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Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik is conceptual artist working with craft and food to tell the stories of migration. Sita holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Scripps College, and an M.F.A. in interdisciplinary art and an M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. Raised in Los Angeles and based in Oakland, she is Indian and Japanese Colombian American. Sita has exhibited and collaborated in the US, Holland, Ireland, Hong Kong, and Mexico. Her projects include installing curry powder in a European castle, importing artisan goods over the US-Mexico border, and leading workshops about food, migration, and memory in Hong Kong. Her most recent project, Estamos contra el muro | We are against the wall, involved the collaborative construction of a border wall made entirely of piñatas. The East Bay Express described it as "the most joyous political critique of the year."
 
Sita is also a co-founder of the People's Kitchen Collective (PKC), who were named in 2016's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ YBCA 100 list. They are recipients of the Center for Asian American Media’s (CAAM) Advocate Award and were awarded support by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation Open Spaces Program. PKC recently exhibited with For Freedoms, the first artist-run super PAC at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York and at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center's Crosslines pop-up museum. The goal of The People's Kitchen is to not only fill our stomachs but also nourish our souls, feed our minds and fuel a movement.
 
See also peopleskitchencollective.com.

Photo credit: Rachyel Magana



 

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  • Born: Los Angeles, CA, USA
  • Based: Oakland, CA, USA

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Imin Yeh Interviews Johanna Poethig about Placesettings

Imin Yeh Johanna Poethig

2011 Interview 14 minutes Courtesy of the author.

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Imin Yeh

b. 1983

IMIN YEH received a B.A.in Art History with Asian Option from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2005) and an M.F.A. from California College of the Arts (2009). She creates sculptures, installations, downloadable crafts, and participatory artist-led projects. Recent projects include a 2012 commission from the San Jose Museum of Art and a year-long parasitic contemporary art space called SpaceBi that takes place in the Asian Art Museum. She has exhibited at the Asian Art Museum, Zero1 Biennial, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Meridian Gallery, Kearny Street Workshop, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Intersection for the Arts, Pro Arts Gallery, Mission Cultural Center, and Southern Exposure. She has been invited to be an Artist in Residence at Montalvo Art Center in Saratoga, CA (2010), Blue Mountain Center in New York (2011), and Sandarbh Artist Workshop in Partapur, India (2013), and Recology San Francisco (2014). She has received an Individual Artist Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission (2011), Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship (2008), and the Barclay Simpson Award (2009). She was recently awarded a 2014-2016 Eureka Fellowship through the Fleishhacker Foundation and is an adjunct lecturer at San Jose State University.

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Johanna Poethig

b. 1956

Johanna Poethig’s work crosses public and private realms. She studied at Jose Abad Santos Memorial City (JASMS) in Quezon City; the University of California, Santa Cruz; and got her M.F.A. at Mills College. She has exhibited her paintings, sculpture, public art works, murals, installations and video internationally. Poethig works with other artists, architects, planners, curators and communities on social and artistic interventions in our shared spaces. She produces and participates in performance events that mix feminism, global politics, cabaret, experimental music and video. Poethig is a professor at the Visual and Public Art department at California State University, Monterey Bay. She grew up in the Philippines and lives in Oakland, California.

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  • Born: New Jersey, USA
  • Based: Oakland, CA, USA

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Immigrant Lives and the Politics of Olfaction in the Global City

Martin F. Manalansan IV

2006 Criticism. 11 pages. Courtesy of Bloomsbury Academic Press.

The Smell Culture Reader (ed. Jim Drobnick), p.41-52.

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Martin F. Manalansan IV

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Born and raised in the Philippines, Manalansan studied philosophy and anthropology at the University of the Philippines and did graduate studies in sociocultural anthropology at Syracuse University and the University of Rochester, both in New York State. He is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, and he lives in the windy city of Chicago. 

Interested in the intersection of media, popular culture, everyday life, emotions, and forms of bodily experiences, he enjoys the freedom of tenure by indulging in broad undisciplined pedagogical pursuits and research trajectories.  From food to queer issues, urban space to movies, his shifting archives reflect his non-allegiance to disciplinary concerns, although he maintains a deep seated and long-standing admiration for and dedication to the ethnographic method.

He is the author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2003; Ateneo University Press 2006) and editor or co-editor of four anthologies, most recently Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader (New York University Press, 2013), as well as several journal special issues. His forthcoming book entitled Queer Dwellings examines the affective landscapes, ethical lives, and embodied experiences of undocumented queer immigrants living under precarious conditions. The enduring issues that animate and fuel his intellectual pursuits include social justice, embodiment, quotidian life, ordinary meanings, modes of desire and habitation.

While based in the Midwest, Manalansan maintains emotional and intellectual ties to two other cities: New York and Manila. One day, he hopes to find himself in a position to be able to live in both cities at different times of the year. In the meantime, he is content to question, marvel and ironically enjoy the fictions and myths of the American heartland.

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  • Born: The Philippines
  • Based: Chicago, IL, USA

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Mediated Diasporas: Material Translations of the Philippines in a Globalized World

Deirdre McKay Mark Johnson

2011 Criticism 16 pages. Courtesy of IP Publishing.

South East Asia Research 19. 2 (2011): 181-196.

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Deirdre McKay

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Dr. McKay is a Senior Lecturer in Social Geography and Environmental Politics at Keele University. Previously she held appointments as a Postdoctoral Fellow and then Research Fellow in the School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. McKay earned her B.A. (1st Hons) in Biology and Master's in Environmental Studies from Dalhousie University (Canada) and a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of British Columbia. Dr. McKay's research draws on both social/cultural geography and social anthropology to explore people's place-based experiences of globalization and development. She is interested in the long-distance relations that connect outmigrants to their sending communities, changes in local livelihoods and the possibilities for locally sustainable, alternative economic development, and environmental degradation linked to migration. Dr. McKay does fieldwork in the global South and also with migrant communities from developing areas who have moved into the world's global cities. Much of her work has been conducted with people who originate in indigenous villages in the northern Philippines. Dr. McKay is the author of numerous articles, chapters, and edited collections. Her book, Global Filipinos: Migrants' Lives in the Virtual Village, was published in 2012 by Indiana University Press.

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Mark Johnson

b. 1963
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I was born in Oklahoma in 1963, but I spent most of my childhood in the Southern Philippines, living in Sulu and Zamboanga.  It is that early experience that underpins my continuing interest in and research about Filipino Muslims in particular.  After taking my first degree in California, I moved subsequently to the U.K. where I undertook postgraduate training, first in Archaeology and then Anthropology, at University College London.

My research interests and writing are focused broadly around the issues of gender/sexuality, landscape and material culture, movement and transnationalism. I have conducted ethnographic research in the Philippines, Vietnam, Costa Rica and, more recently, Saudi Arabia. My original research in the Philippines was concerned with gender and sexual diversity in the context of both real and imagined movements of people and the growth of ethno-nationalist discourse. Recent Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded research focused on the place of religion in the experiences of Filipino migrant workers in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia in particular.

Books

2011. Diasporic Journeys, Ritual, and Normativity among Asian Migrant Women. London: Routledge. (with Pnina Werbner, eds.)

1997. Beauty and Power:  Transgendering and Cultural Transformation in the Southern Philippines.  Oxford: Berg.

Edited Journal Issues

2012.  Queer Asian Subjects:  Transgressive Sexualities and Heteronormative Meanings.  Asian Studies Review 36(4) December. (with E. Blackwood, eds.)

2011. Mediated Diasporas: Material Translation of the Philippines in a Globalized World. South East Asia Research 19(2): 181-341. (with D. McKay, eds)

2010.  Diasporic Encounters, Sacred Journeys:  Ritual, Normativity and the Religious Imagination among International Asian Migrant Women. Special double issue of The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology11 (3-4): 205-448.  (with P. Werbner, eds.)

2000.  Gender and Sexual Diversity in East and South-East Asia. Culture, Health and Sexuality 2(4): 361-472. (with P. Jackson, eds.)

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  • Born: Oklahoma, USA
  • Based: Hull, England, UK

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Memories (what I may not have forgotten to remember)

Francis Estrada

2013 Gouache and charcoal on paper 9" x 7" Courtesy of the artist

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Francis Estrada

b. 1975

Born in the Philipines and currently residing in Brooklyn, Francis Estrada is a visual artist, museum educator at the Museum of Modern Art, and freelance educator of Filipino art and culture. Francis has a fine arts degree in painting and drawing from San Jose State University, and he has taught in a variety of studio, classroom, and museum settings to diverse audiences, including programs for adults with disabilities, cultural institutions, and after-school programs. He was also an administrator and educator at the Museum for African Art, where he enjoyed teaching about the amalgamation of art and culture through objects. Francis exhibits his work nationally, including online publications. His work focuses on culture, history, and perception.

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  • Born: Manila, Philippines
  • Based: Brooklyn, NY, USA

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Motherhood and the Race for Sustainability

Marie Lo

2014 Criticism. 25 pages. Patti Duncan and Gina Wong (eds.), Mothering in East Asian Communities: Politics and Practices

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Marie Lo

Marie Lo is an associate professor of English at Portland State University. She received her PhD from UC Berkeley and her BA from McGill University. She has published on Asian Canadian and Asian American literature, and she is currently working on a book that examines 19th century U.S. Indian policy and immigration law. She has also been involved grassroots media and was a co-founder and co-producer of APA Compass, an Asian Pacific American public affairs program. She also likes knitting, spinning yarn and gardening, and is beginning a project on craft and U.S. racial politics.

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  • Born: Chu Tung, Taiwan
  • Based: Portland, OR, USA

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