About Filipina Pate

In Filipino culture, kapwa is the belief that there is a shared sense of identity, responsibility, and unity with others, including my family, my larger community and the environment. ​

 

​My work is about reviving and developing connections to my kapwa. As the U.S. born eldest daughter of Filipino immigrants, I grew up feeling cut off from the Philippines. I learned how to be Filipino from family, but I never learned how to speak Filipino and I never learned about Philippine or Filipino American history. I often feel like I live between two worlds and I am not enough in either of them.

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My art-making mirrors the messy and never-ending process of negotiating what aspects of my Filipino and American culture to carry forward with me. I start by collaging text and images to reflect how individual experience is built on fragments of story and memory. I then build layers of color and texture and weave together my own stories into the painting. The painting is finished when seemingly contradictory images and text have come together into a greater sense of unity with my kapwa and within myself.

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I hope my work inspires reflection on how we form identity and community, and I want to contribute to helping people develop and maintain our shared responsibilities to each other and to the environment.

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Exhibitions

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2026

Group Exhibition, Un(Altered) Books, Unheard Voices, University of Denver, Anderson Academic Commons, Denver, Colorado

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2023

Group Exhibition, Tavira Thro' Visitors Eyes, Artesis Galeria, Tavira, Portugal

Group Exhibition, Northeast, Exeter Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland

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Education

Bachelor of Arts, Major in Art

St. Mary's College of Maryland, 1992

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