You are (not) Invited II Exhibition at All Street Gallery

Come into our kitchen, and eat our food; this is (not) an invitation. The Kitchen Project presents the second iteration of You are (not) Invited, featuring works that center diasporic femme Asian stories on care, labor, and maternal figures in the kitchen. What are novel and known ways of taking care of each other? You are (not) Invited II showcases an entanglement of consuming labor, love, and affinity. 

“You are (not) Invited” exhibit runs at All Street Gallery - 119 Hester Street, from April 3-10. Gallery hours are from 1-7pm.

The exhibition features works of The Kitchen Project, Abang-guard, Anooj Bhandari, Jade Doumani, Fei Ewald, Toby Kim, Janine Lai, Chan Lin, Siobhan McBride, Tiffany Pham, Khôi Nguyên Trinh, Michy Woodward, Annika Wong, Siyan Wong, and Lydia Zhou.

The Kitchen Project is currently funded by the Brown Institute of Media Innovation.

Invisible Bodies Exhibition at HUB-Robeson Galleries

The HUB-Robeson Galleries at Pennsylvania State University hosts the Invisible Bodies exhibition, curated by The Border Gallery and Emireth Herrera Valdés. The show explores migrant labor from an artistic point of view will be on view from Octbober 10, 2023 - February 18, 2024.

Invisible Bodies examines the relationship between migration and labor; bringing attention to the overlooked stories of unseen individuals within society. The exhibition displays the resilience, determination and hierarchical structures tied to immigration and race in the U.S. It includes 15 artists who have created socially engaged projects, paintings, sculptures, installations and performances. These works reflect on the demanding nature of labor and its undervaluation.

The exhibition also looks at the gender and racial aspects of migrant bodies as non-citizen workers. These workers play a crucial role in shaping today's society. The gallery's green walls symbolize support for an open immigration system. This allows immigrants to contribute to the nation's labor force. The featured artists include Abang-guard (Maureen Catbagan + Jevijoe Vitug), Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Magdalena Dukiewicz, Brendan Fernandes, Billy Gerard Frank, Zac Hacmon, Julia Justo, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Jamie Martinez, Zahra Nazari, Michael Pribich, Lina Puerta, Coralina Rodriguez Meyer, Luis Alvaro Sahagun, and Manon Wada.

More Than Lumpia Exhibition at Epiphany Center for the Arts

Abang-guard’s Little Manila Monuments - Little Manila Ave. (2023) will be on view in the More Than Lumpia exhibition curated by Cesar Conde at the Epiphany Center for the Arts from October 6 - November 17.

As Filipino cuisine gains recognition, More Than Lumpia explores Filipino-American identity, socio-cultural experience, and politics behind the lens of visual art. The exhibition aims to address and challenge the underrepresentation of Filipino-American artists in the art community. Despite being the second-largest Asian group in the United States, Filipino-Americans have often been overlooked and marginalized in mainstream art institutions. By exploring the Filipino-American experience through visual arts, this exhibit aims to challenge stereotypes, promote representation, and foster a more inclusive art community.

Art of the Guardians Panel Talk at AAMG Virtual Convening

Jevijoe Vitug and I as Aban-guard along with poet Louisa Lam were part of Art of the Guardians presentation by Lambert Fernando and panel discussion for the 2023 Association of Academic Museums and Galleries Virtual Convening. Lambert’s presentation topic was about the art of Security Officers at the Met and their profound relationship they have formed with the collection, their experiences during the COVID 19 pandemic, and the art that they created during the lockdown. The art was later exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC in a exhibition titled: Art Work: Artists working at the Met, which opened for the first time to the public and was very well received garnering international press coverage including NBC Nightly News, Aljazeera TV and German ARD TV. I discussed how museum guards and staff can be a vital collaborative and educational resource in connecting with communities by sharing Abang-guard’s projects and our translations of museum spaces and objects.

Abang-guard Street Museum at The Six Foot Platform

Jevijoe Vitug and I will be performing Abang-guard Street Museum at The Six Foot Platform in Dumbo, Brooklyn from 12-6 pm. The Six Foot Platform is an experimental art and performance program that presents work by Brooklyn-based artists on a 6 x6 platform at the intersection of Washington and Water Streets.

Abang-guard Street Museum is a participatory platform that enables the public to share their inner voice and creative expression via gallery format. Part workshop, part art space, Abang-guard will host and feature each piece made by the public. The platform museum provides an opportunity to showcase and uplift a diversity of voices while questioning what constitutes art and who can be an artist. Through democratic disruption, Abang-guard Street Museum empowers creativity while opening a wider field of access and authorship to the cultural production of value.

Presented by the Dumbo Improvement District in partnership with Brooklyn Arts Council.

Quiet Before - The Brown Vanguard

Quiet Before is a series of panels co-ordinated by Nancy Bulalacao that examines anti-Asian violence by “capturing history through conversation.” Recently the series featured artist Lambert Fernando, poet Louisa Lam, and Abang-guard (with me and Jevijoe Vitug) as we talk about our groundbreaking work inspired by being museum art guards and the community we have built along the way.

Video Projects in The Met Museum’s Art Work Exhibition

I’m excited to be part of The Met Museum’s Art Work: Artists Working at The Met exhibit highlighting museum workers with two collaborative video projects including artists Jevijoe Vitug and IV Castellanos. The show is part of a long-standing tradition of art worker creatives sharing their work within The Met community since 1935 and will be open for viewing to the public for the first time. The exhibition runs from June 6-19, 2021

Shifting Sights/Sites - A Participatory Performance Event

The audience will be invited to participate in a guided sound, movement and reflection exercise by Abang-guard duo Maureen Catbagan and Jevijoe Vitug along with sound artist Sholeh Asgary. The performance will be followed by a lecture focusing on systems of care that re-envision the body as a dynamic, multi-layered site of interconnected trajectories and possibilities. The body becomes an entry point that touches upon themes of hidden histories, embodied knowledge, symbiotic relations, and modes of recuperation.

Note: Center for Book Arts will hold this event entirely online. A Zoom link will be sent in an email to all registrants.

Three Turns: Turn 2 at SFAI Towers

Featuring 26 artists, Three Turns stems from the concept that engaging artworks provide a viewer with three different entry points, prompting a deeper exploration into the work itself. Projected on the historic SFAI Tower at 800 Chestnut Street, which houses the Institution’s 150 year old archive, Three Turns will echo the notion of traveling three turns in time and space by showing the selected alumni video works on the Tower in dialogue with video works selected from the SFAI archive.

Archive works were selected by Margaret Tedesco and Leila Weefur, curators of the upcoming 150th anniversary exhibition Spirit of Disruption. My collab video with artist Jevijoe Vitug Abang-guard Work Habits was juxtaposed with Yin-Ju Chen’s Three Decades of Static. Props to artist Sholeh Asgary for creating the new soundtrack.