Filipino-American Artist Camille Hoffman's “See and Missed” at San Luis Obispo Museum of Art
Honoring Filipinos Early History in the US and their Complex American Identities
Photography by Stephen Heraldo and Heraldo Creative Studio
Filipino-American Camille Hoffman's new exhibition “See and Missed” at San Luis Obispo Museum of Art opened last month and has quickly become a celebrated experience but complicated conversation about Filipino American identity in which Hoffman told the Los Angeles Times “is very tied to moving across water and across many lands but never fully situated in one place." Which is a feeling most diaspora can agree with.
At SLOMA, the New York-based artist’s exhibit features sweeping landscapes that explore our early immigrant ancestors' arrival and connection to the Central Coast. Highlighting these vignettes through a mix of painting, collages, and non-traditional materials like nurse’s gowns, pińa embroidered textiles and wooden benches resembling balangay boats, Hoffman hopes to illuminate the rich history of Filipinos in the US History and our contributions to the fabric of this country that is so often overlooked.
A deeply sensory experience, the romantic and large format mixtures of topography and scenes melt both California Chumash Land and the Philppines in what is truly an immersive but pleasantly disorienting dream like space.
In the exterior of the museum, Hoffman has also created a sculpture entitled, "Storied Waters: Dreams of Bayanihan". The inspiration for the piece was to explore the first documented Filipino landing in U.S. history in what is now Morro Bay in 1587.The pieces showcases silhouettes of historic photos of Filipinos in California and honors “laborers, past, present, and future,” and invites conversation around “unraveling and re-threading of misplaced personal and collective narratives in the wake of colonialism.”
Hoffman’s installation is the third project of the program in partnership with the SLO Museum of Art.
Chicago-born and Yale MFA alum, Camille Hoffman’s breadth of work has been featured in the Los Angeles Time and The New Yorker. She is known to use materials collected from childhood and her everyday life to craft imaginary landscapes that are grounded in accumulation, rehabilitation, personal narrative, and historical critique. Taking inspiration from the Philippine weaving and storytelling traditions of her ancestors on the islands and on American soil, she combines paint with found landscapes to reveal seamless yet textured transcultural contradictions to the legacy of Filipinos in the US. Learn more about her on her website here.
Camille Hoffman: See and Missed is currently on display at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art through Aug. 22.
Images Courtesy of Stephen Heraldo and Heraldo Creative Studio, and Camille Hoffman via Instagram (@camillehoffmanstudio)
Photography by Stephen Heraldo and Heraldo Creative Studio
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