topic

Care work

In “Servicing the World: Flexible Filipinos and the Unsecured Life” (2010), anthropologist Martin F. Manalansan IV argues that, because of their supposed innate talent for carework, “Filipinos have become synonymous with the care industry across the world. Maid, nanny, waiter, cook, nurse, janitor, clerk, entertainer, prostitute ... the list of occupational roles played by Filipinos in the transnational labor market goes on and on like a painful litany of expendable characters” (215).

 

As the ambiguity of the term “carework” suggests, Filipinos and Filipinas in the transnational circuits of care-taking attend not only to the physical and material well-being of their employers but also to employers’ emotional and psychic lives. As careworkers, Filipinos are both inside and outside the family in a position of strained intimacy, paid to do  work supposedly outside the commercial realm. Simultaneously, the emotional economy of the globalized family, in which Filipino families are spread across the world caring for others, is frequently at odds with the care for the self that an individual must (and may struggle to) sustain in order to endure his/her life in foreign and frequently unwelcoming settings.

 

The works in this topic reflect upon the historical and structural conditions that "make" Filipinos into careworkers, the specific locations in which Filipinos do this work, and Filipinos’ diverse responses to those demands.

Comfort the Lonely

Francis Estrada

2012 Gouache, collage, and vellum on paper 5.5" x 7.5" Courtesy of the artist

contributor

X

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.

I investigate relationships between characters and their environment. I incorporate pieces of personal, historic and/or ethnographic photographs, text, and motifs (most of which broach the combined themes of history, sentimentality, and nostalgia).  Using some or all of these pieces, I compose scenarios with which I find personal connections then arrange them without providing a complete image or narrative. By de-contextualizing visual images (figures, symbols, motifs) from their original source, I attempt to create an ambiguous space for the viewer to complete. I interrogate how context is created through combinations of these visual elements.  How does the viewer identify with the images presented, and does the composition create a narrative?  How do the combinations of images create notions of space, place, history, identity, or memory?  By creating drawings that assimilate text, photographic reproductions, and symbols, I provide the viewer with a space in which they can decipher the visual clues and “complete” the work.

My art is a tool through which I confront how our understandings of culture are mediated, and the methods through which history and memory are created and perpetuated. I think of my work as "partial portraits" that are activated by the viewer.

I believe that my work speaks to the theme of Storm: A Typhoon Haiyan Recovery Project by connecting to how the media represented the country through images from the aftermath of the storm.  Also, various fundraising events brought out a vast array of artists and performers who used their talent to share Filipino customs (dance, song, martial arts).  Between the media and these events, people were able to see and experience various aspects of Filipino culture.  I feel that my drawings similarly portray various aspects of Philippine culture through the images that I choose to show. 

location

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

comments

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The Brick Oven

DeNNiSOmeRa

2012 Poem. Courtesy of the author.

contributor

X

DeNNiSOmeRa

b. Year of the Snake/US ImmigratioNationality Act
image description
  • See All Works

Practicing pokin'wordsplayw/pinch/punch of performancEa®thistor/y on and off the page, in and out of his mindbody, DeNNiSOmeRa is a writerliPOethink®, nEOnotsoPOst.©o.lOnial FOet/schola®©tivisavista, FOst.©o.lOnial FOetal.

Born in Baguio City, Benguet Province, Luzon Island on the archipelago known in the second language of its colonization as the Philippines, Dennis emigrated in his mother's lap to the US when he was eleven months old. He grew up His growth wa s tunted in the intolerance/ignorance of Sacramento, CA, the larger US misrepresentations and omissions of Asian/Pilipino-American from literature, history, media, and authority/leadershiPositions. Eventually he was borne by the ink and movement of the pen on page then toncescreened through keyboard, the act of writing performing his ontology through and in spite of WEstern eUrocentric olonialimperial assimilationist, objectifying, appropriative logics.

After graduating from UCSanta Cruz, then migrating to San FranciscOakland where he worked with youth for several years, he returned to the Philippines (and Southeast Asia) for the firstime since his i'mmigration. At an aRts festival in his birthplace, he participated in poetry and video workshops. After nine months in the Philippines and three traveling in Southeast Asia, he returned to the US, where he continued to grow his writing & performancEa® th r ough workshops, open mics and performance opportunities back in the SF Bay Area via June Jordan's Poetry for the People at UCBerkeley, Glide Memorial Church and the Mission Cultural Center in SF, the Ohana Open Mic in Oakland, Kearny Street Workshop in SF and a PilipinoAM theater based in SF, SOMA's Bindlestiff Studios.

Following a year at California College of Arts and Crafts, he found Mills College in Oakland to be the place where his thoroughandling of language were most at home. Through Mills, he not only refined a praxis of experimentaLANGUAGE writing to represent his thoughts poetically in the M.F.A.––but also during performance collaborations w/experimental musicians and dancers in/out of his mindbody––he continUed to further the process and perFORMance of language beyond the page: sowing seeds for his present pursuit of a Ph.D. in Performance Studies at UCDavis. Dennis' writing has been published online and off in poetry journals Tinfish, Chain, Cricket Online Review, Bay Poetics, POMPOM, 2nd Avenue Poetry, Deep Oakland. His morecent wordsplaying has been focused just off screen in a film narration performance called movietelling(Lew)/Katsuben (a silent film era Japanese form(oreso the Korean Pyonsa who subverted Japanese propaganda films in their colonial era there), performing his mov[i.e.]telling work nationally in NYC, Miami, Oakland SF.

My current aRtisticreati've work is a poeticritical illumination of the colonialimperial/patriarchal inscription on the mindbody through poeticritical archi“text”uralandscapes–––primarily revisioning in the form of mov[i.e.]telling/Katsuben: a Japanese form of film narration from the silent film era; he better identifies with the Korean film narrators called Pyonsa who subverted Japanese colonial propaganda films in their colonial era there.

Through a nEOnotsOpoOst©olOnialense, my critical work and research attends to persistent assimilative logics, objectificational representation practices and intellectual appropriations in settler hegemonicolonial culture perpetuating continued epistemicolonial violences––stemming from WEstern civilization'self-constitution as the repression and projection of its disowned savage/barbarian/heathen on all Others and continUed consolidation through persistent un/conscioUS EUrasing t/races of Others and the EUrasure of thesEUrasures–––and the critical/theoretical and comparative gestures in hybridiasporic poetics by intellectuals and writers of the "missing passage", specifically around the tropes of utterance, speech, the tongue, languagetc. as constant and continued DEcolonizingeMpoweresponses to, aswellasymptoms of a continuing white WEsterneUrocentric hegemonicolonial state.

location

X
  • Born: Baguio City, Philippines
  • Based: Oakland, CA, USA
  • Also Based in: Baguio City, Philippines
    San Francisco, CA, USA

comments

X

MacArthur Nurses (Pushing)

Jenifer K. Wofford

2009 Ink and acrylic on paper from the MacArthur Nurses series

contributor

X

Jenifer K. Wofford

Jenifer K. Wofford is a Filipina-American artist and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also one third of the manic, brilliant, highly delusional artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. She was born in San Francisco, California and raised in Hong Kong, China, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. She received her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her M.F.A. from University of California, Berkeley.

Her work has been exhibited in California’s San Francisco Bay Area at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Southern Exposure Museum/Art Gallery, and Kearny Street Workshop; nationally at New Image Art (Los Angeles, California), DePaul Museum (Chicago, Illinois), thirtynine hotel (Honolulu, Hawai’i), and internationally at Future Prospects (Philippines), Galerie Blanche (France), and Osage Gallery Kwun Tong (Hong Kong, China).

Her awards include the Eureka Fellowship and the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the Art Matters Foundation, the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, and the Pacific Rim Research Program. She has also undertaken artist residencies at The Living Room, Philippines; KinoKino, Norway; and Bogliaso Foundation, Italy. Wofford was also honored with a 2007 “Goldie” (Guardian Local Discovery) Award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Happily, I have no quick, one-word answer to the “what kind of art do you make” question: the questions that provoke my projects necessitate varied approaches, from visual and performance strategies to teaching and curatorial work. My work often plays with notions of difference, hybridity, liminality and authenticity. It’s often governed by the creative slapstick that occurs when aesthetic values blunder into cultural frictions and global inequities. I do what I can to make work that is absurd, irreverent, imaginative, honest and political, employing as many strategies as seem appropriate.

Most of my creative logic is governed by a global positionality that’s the result of a mixed Filipino/American family, a Third-Culture childhood in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia; an adulthood in diverse California; and a lifetime of international and intercultural experience. It’s also shaped by years as an educator, working with a tremendous diversity of students and communities. For all of these reasons, I am committed to a practice that engages a multiplicity of voices often unheard or under-represented in the arts.

Collaboration and camaraderie are integral parts of my practice: my projects often involve friends and strangers in all manner of creatively weird situations. I do not particularly consider myself an artist in isolation: the most satisfying work I’ve made has involved exchange, sharing, joking, and cooperation. It makes things more relevant, and more fun, immediately.

location

X
  • Born: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Based: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Also Based in: Los Angeles, CA, USA
    Oakland, CA, USA

comments

X

MacArthur Nurses (Descent)

Jenifer K. Wofford

2009 Ink and acrylic on paper from the MacArthur Nurses series

contributor

X

Jenifer K. Wofford

Jenifer K. Wofford is a Filipina-American artist and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also one third of the manic, brilliant, highly delusional artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. She was born in San Francisco, California and raised in Hong Kong, China, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. She received her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her M.F.A. from University of California, Berkeley.

Her work has been exhibited in California’s San Francisco Bay Area at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Southern Exposure Museum/Art Gallery, and Kearny Street Workshop; nationally at New Image Art (Los Angeles, California), DePaul Museum (Chicago, Illinois), thirtynine hotel (Honolulu, Hawai’i), and internationally at Future Prospects (Philippines), Galerie Blanche (France), and Osage Gallery Kwun Tong (Hong Kong, China).

Her awards include the Eureka Fellowship and the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the Art Matters Foundation, the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, and the Pacific Rim Research Program. She has also undertaken artist residencies at The Living Room, Philippines; KinoKino, Norway; and Bogliaso Foundation, Italy. Wofford was also honored with a 2007 “Goldie” (Guardian Local Discovery) Award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Happily, I have no quick, one-word answer to the “what kind of art do you make” question: the questions that provoke my projects necessitate varied approaches, from visual and performance strategies to teaching and curatorial work. My work often plays with notions of difference, hybridity, liminality and authenticity. It’s often governed by the creative slapstick that occurs when aesthetic values blunder into cultural frictions and global inequities. I do what I can to make work that is absurd, irreverent, imaginative, honest and political, employing as many strategies as seem appropriate.

Most of my creative logic is governed by a global positionality that’s the result of a mixed Filipino/American family, a Third-Culture childhood in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia; an adulthood in diverse California; and a lifetime of international and intercultural experience. It’s also shaped by years as an educator, working with a tremendous diversity of students and communities. For all of these reasons, I am committed to a practice that engages a multiplicity of voices often unheard or under-represented in the arts.

Collaboration and camaraderie are integral parts of my practice: my projects often involve friends and strangers in all manner of creatively weird situations. I do not particularly consider myself an artist in isolation: the most satisfying work I’ve made has involved exchange, sharing, joking, and cooperation. It makes things more relevant, and more fun, immediately.

location

X
  • Born: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Based: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Also Based in: Los Angeles, CA, USA
    Oakland, CA, USA

comments

X

MacArthur Nurses (Pearl)

Jenifer K. Wofford

2009 Ink and acrylic on paper from the MacArthur Nurses series

contributor

X

Jenifer K. Wofford

Jenifer K. Wofford is a Filipina-American artist and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also one third of the manic, brilliant, highly delusional artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. She was born in San Francisco, California and raised in Hong Kong, China, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. She received her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her M.F.A. from University of California, Berkeley.

Her work has been exhibited in California’s San Francisco Bay Area at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Southern Exposure Museum/Art Gallery, and Kearny Street Workshop; nationally at New Image Art (Los Angeles, California), DePaul Museum (Chicago, Illinois), thirtynine hotel (Honolulu, Hawai’i), and internationally at Future Prospects (Philippines), Galerie Blanche (France), and Osage Gallery Kwun Tong (Hong Kong, China).

Her awards include the Eureka Fellowship and the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the Art Matters Foundation, the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, and the Pacific Rim Research Program. She has also undertaken artist residencies at The Living Room, Philippines; KinoKino, Norway; and Bogliaso Foundation, Italy. Wofford was also honored with a 2007 “Goldie” (Guardian Local Discovery) Award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Happily, I have no quick, one-word answer to the “what kind of art do you make” question: the questions that provoke my projects necessitate varied approaches, from visual and performance strategies to teaching and curatorial work. My work often plays with notions of difference, hybridity, liminality and authenticity. It’s often governed by the creative slapstick that occurs when aesthetic values blunder into cultural frictions and global inequities. I do what I can to make work that is absurd, irreverent, imaginative, honest and political, employing as many strategies as seem appropriate.

Most of my creative logic is governed by a global positionality that’s the result of a mixed Filipino/American family, a Third-Culture childhood in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia; an adulthood in diverse California; and a lifetime of international and intercultural experience. It’s also shaped by years as an educator, working with a tremendous diversity of students and communities. For all of these reasons, I am committed to a practice that engages a multiplicity of voices often unheard or under-represented in the arts.

Collaboration and camaraderie are integral parts of my practice: my projects often involve friends and strangers in all manner of creatively weird situations. I do not particularly consider myself an artist in isolation: the most satisfying work I’ve made has involved exchange, sharing, joking, and cooperation. It makes things more relevant, and more fun, immediately.

location

X
  • Born: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Based: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Also Based in: Los Angeles, CA, USA
    Oakland, CA, USA

comments

X

MacArthur Nurses (Vision)

Jenifer K. Wofford

2009 Ink and acrylic on paper from the MacArthur Nurses series

contributor

X

Jenifer K. Wofford

Jenifer K. Wofford is a Filipina-American artist and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also one third of the manic, brilliant, highly delusional artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. She was born in San Francisco, California and raised in Hong Kong, China, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. She received her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her M.F.A. from University of California, Berkeley.

Her work has been exhibited in California’s San Francisco Bay Area at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Southern Exposure Museum/Art Gallery, and Kearny Street Workshop; nationally at New Image Art (Los Angeles, California), DePaul Museum (Chicago, Illinois), thirtynine hotel (Honolulu, Hawai’i), and internationally at Future Prospects (Philippines), Galerie Blanche (France), and Osage Gallery Kwun Tong (Hong Kong, China).

Her awards include the Eureka Fellowship and the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the Art Matters Foundation, the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, and the Pacific Rim Research Program. She has also undertaken artist residencies at The Living Room, Philippines; KinoKino, Norway; and Bogliaso Foundation, Italy. Wofford was also honored with a 2007 “Goldie” (Guardian Local Discovery) Award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Happily, I have no quick, one-word answer to the “what kind of art do you make” question: the questions that provoke my projects necessitate varied approaches, from visual and performance strategies to teaching and curatorial work. My work often plays with notions of difference, hybridity, liminality and authenticity. It’s often governed by the creative slapstick that occurs when aesthetic values blunder into cultural frictions and global inequities. I do what I can to make work that is absurd, irreverent, imaginative, honest and political, employing as many strategies as seem appropriate.

Most of my creative logic is governed by a global positionality that’s the result of a mixed Filipino/American family, a Third-Culture childhood in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia; an adulthood in diverse California; and a lifetime of international and intercultural experience. It’s also shaped by years as an educator, working with a tremendous diversity of students and communities. For all of these reasons, I am committed to a practice that engages a multiplicity of voices often unheard or under-represented in the arts.

Collaboration and camaraderie are integral parts of my practice: my projects often involve friends and strangers in all manner of creatively weird situations. I do not particularly consider myself an artist in isolation: the most satisfying work I’ve made has involved exchange, sharing, joking, and cooperation. It makes things more relevant, and more fun, immediately.

location

X
  • Born: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Based: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Also Based in: Los Angeles, CA, USA
    Oakland, CA, USA

comments

X

Point of Departure (Hospital Night)

Jenifer K. Wofford

2007 Gouache, acrylic and ink on paper from the Point of Departure series

contributor

X

Jenifer K. Wofford

Jenifer K. Wofford is a Filipina-American artist and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also one third of the manic, brilliant, highly delusional artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. She was born in San Francisco, California and raised in Hong Kong, China, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. She received her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her M.F.A. from University of California, Berkeley.

Her work has been exhibited in California’s San Francisco Bay Area at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Southern Exposure Museum/Art Gallery, and Kearny Street Workshop; nationally at New Image Art (Los Angeles, California), DePaul Museum (Chicago, Illinois), thirtynine hotel (Honolulu, Hawai’i), and internationally at Future Prospects (Philippines), Galerie Blanche (France), and Osage Gallery Kwun Tong (Hong Kong, China).

Her awards include the Eureka Fellowship and the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the Art Matters Foundation, the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, and the Pacific Rim Research Program. She has also undertaken artist residencies at The Living Room, Philippines; KinoKino, Norway; and Bogliaso Foundation, Italy. Wofford was also honored with a 2007 “Goldie” (Guardian Local Discovery) Award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Happily, I have no quick, one-word answer to the “what kind of art do you make” question: the questions that provoke my projects necessitate varied approaches, from visual and performance strategies to teaching and curatorial work. My work often plays with notions of difference, hybridity, liminality and authenticity. It’s often governed by the creative slapstick that occurs when aesthetic values blunder into cultural frictions and global inequities. I do what I can to make work that is absurd, irreverent, imaginative, honest and political, employing as many strategies as seem appropriate.

Most of my creative logic is governed by a global positionality that’s the result of a mixed Filipino/American family, a Third-Culture childhood in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia; an adulthood in diverse California; and a lifetime of international and intercultural experience. It’s also shaped by years as an educator, working with a tremendous diversity of students and communities. For all of these reasons, I am committed to a practice that engages a multiplicity of voices often unheard or under-represented in the arts.

Collaboration and camaraderie are integral parts of my practice: my projects often involve friends and strangers in all manner of creatively weird situations. I do not particularly consider myself an artist in isolation: the most satisfying work I’ve made has involved exchange, sharing, joking, and cooperation. It makes things more relevant, and more fun, immediately.

location

X
  • Born: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Based: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Also Based in: Los Angeles, CA, USA
    Oakland, CA, USA

comments

X

Point of Departure (Diptych)

Jenifer K. Wofford

2007 Gouache, acrylic and ink on paper from the Point of Departure series

contributor

X

Jenifer K. Wofford

Jenifer K. Wofford is a Filipina-American artist and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also one third of the manic, brilliant, highly delusional artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. She was born in San Francisco, California and raised in Hong Kong, China, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. She received her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her M.F.A. from University of California, Berkeley.

Her work has been exhibited in California’s San Francisco Bay Area at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Southern Exposure Museum/Art Gallery, and Kearny Street Workshop; nationally at New Image Art (Los Angeles, California), DePaul Museum (Chicago, Illinois), thirtynine hotel (Honolulu, Hawai’i), and internationally at Future Prospects (Philippines), Galerie Blanche (France), and Osage Gallery Kwun Tong (Hong Kong, China).

Her awards include the Eureka Fellowship and the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the Art Matters Foundation, the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, and the Pacific Rim Research Program. She has also undertaken artist residencies at The Living Room, Philippines; KinoKino, Norway; and Bogliaso Foundation, Italy. Wofford was also honored with a 2007 “Goldie” (Guardian Local Discovery) Award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Happily, I have no quick, one-word answer to the “what kind of art do you make” question: the questions that provoke my projects necessitate varied approaches, from visual and performance strategies to teaching and curatorial work. My work often plays with notions of difference, hybridity, liminality and authenticity. It’s often governed by the creative slapstick that occurs when aesthetic values blunder into cultural frictions and global inequities. I do what I can to make work that is absurd, irreverent, imaginative, honest and political, employing as many strategies as seem appropriate.

Most of my creative logic is governed by a global positionality that’s the result of a mixed Filipino/American family, a Third-Culture childhood in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia; an adulthood in diverse California; and a lifetime of international and intercultural experience. It’s also shaped by years as an educator, working with a tremendous diversity of students and communities. For all of these reasons, I am committed to a practice that engages a multiplicity of voices often unheard or under-represented in the arts.

Collaboration and camaraderie are integral parts of my practice: my projects often involve friends and strangers in all manner of creatively weird situations. I do not particularly consider myself an artist in isolation: the most satisfying work I’ve made has involved exchange, sharing, joking, and cooperation. It makes things more relevant, and more fun, immediately.

location

X
  • Born: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Based: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Also Based in: Los Angeles, CA, USA
    Oakland, CA, USA

comments

X

Point of Departure (Diptych 2)

Jenifer K. Wofford

2007 Gouache, acrylic and ink on paper from the Point of Departure series

contributor

X

Jenifer K. Wofford

Jenifer K. Wofford is a Filipina-American artist and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also one third of the manic, brilliant, highly delusional artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. She was born in San Francisco, California and raised in Hong Kong, China, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. She received her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her M.F.A. from University of California, Berkeley.

Her work has been exhibited in California’s San Francisco Bay Area at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Southern Exposure Museum/Art Gallery, and Kearny Street Workshop; nationally at New Image Art (Los Angeles, California), DePaul Museum (Chicago, Illinois), thirtynine hotel (Honolulu, Hawai’i), and internationally at Future Prospects (Philippines), Galerie Blanche (France), and Osage Gallery Kwun Tong (Hong Kong, China).

Her awards include the Eureka Fellowship and the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the Art Matters Foundation, the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, and the Pacific Rim Research Program. She has also undertaken artist residencies at The Living Room, Philippines; KinoKino, Norway; and Bogliaso Foundation, Italy. Wofford was also honored with a 2007 “Goldie” (Guardian Local Discovery) Award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Happily, I have no quick, one-word answer to the “what kind of art do you make” question: the questions that provoke my projects necessitate varied approaches, from visual and performance strategies to teaching and curatorial work. My work often plays with notions of difference, hybridity, liminality and authenticity. It’s often governed by the creative slapstick that occurs when aesthetic values blunder into cultural frictions and global inequities. I do what I can to make work that is absurd, irreverent, imaginative, honest and political, employing as many strategies as seem appropriate.

Most of my creative logic is governed by a global positionality that’s the result of a mixed Filipino/American family, a Third-Culture childhood in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia; an adulthood in diverse California; and a lifetime of international and intercultural experience. It’s also shaped by years as an educator, working with a tremendous diversity of students and communities. For all of these reasons, I am committed to a practice that engages a multiplicity of voices often unheard or under-represented in the arts.

Collaboration and camaraderie are integral parts of my practice: my projects often involve friends and strangers in all manner of creatively weird situations. I do not particularly consider myself an artist in isolation: the most satisfying work I’ve made has involved exchange, sharing, joking, and cooperation. It makes things more relevant, and more fun, immediately.

location

X
  • Born: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Based: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Also Based in: Los Angeles, CA, USA
    Oakland, CA, USA

comments

X

Point of Departure Excerpt (Rooftop)

Jenifer K. Wofford

2007 Gouache, acrylic and ink on paper from the Point of Departure series

contributor

X

Jenifer K. Wofford

Jenifer K. Wofford is a Filipina-American artist and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also one third of the manic, brilliant, highly delusional artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. She was born in San Francisco, California and raised in Hong Kong, China, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. She received her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her M.F.A. from University of California, Berkeley.

Her work has been exhibited in California’s San Francisco Bay Area at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Southern Exposure Museum/Art Gallery, and Kearny Street Workshop; nationally at New Image Art (Los Angeles, California), DePaul Museum (Chicago, Illinois), thirtynine hotel (Honolulu, Hawai’i), and internationally at Future Prospects (Philippines), Galerie Blanche (France), and Osage Gallery Kwun Tong (Hong Kong, China).

Her awards include the Eureka Fellowship and the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the Art Matters Foundation, the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, and the Pacific Rim Research Program. She has also undertaken artist residencies at The Living Room, Philippines; KinoKino, Norway; and Bogliaso Foundation, Italy. Wofford was also honored with a 2007 “Goldie” (Guardian Local Discovery) Award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Happily, I have no quick, one-word answer to the “what kind of art do you make” question: the questions that provoke my projects necessitate varied approaches, from visual and performance strategies to teaching and curatorial work. My work often plays with notions of difference, hybridity, liminality and authenticity. It’s often governed by the creative slapstick that occurs when aesthetic values blunder into cultural frictions and global inequities. I do what I can to make work that is absurd, irreverent, imaginative, honest and political, employing as many strategies as seem appropriate.

Most of my creative logic is governed by a global positionality that’s the result of a mixed Filipino/American family, a Third-Culture childhood in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia; an adulthood in diverse California; and a lifetime of international and intercultural experience. It’s also shaped by years as an educator, working with a tremendous diversity of students and communities. For all of these reasons, I am committed to a practice that engages a multiplicity of voices often unheard or under-represented in the arts.

Collaboration and camaraderie are integral parts of my practice: my projects often involve friends and strangers in all manner of creatively weird situations. I do not particularly consider myself an artist in isolation: the most satisfying work I’ve made has involved exchange, sharing, joking, and cooperation. It makes things more relevant, and more fun, immediately.

location

X
  • Born: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Based: San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Also Based in: Los Angeles, CA, USA
    Oakland, CA, USA

comments

X