magnolia, HD video, 18m13s, 2020

 

magnolia is my most recent work, a musing following the loss of my lola, my grandmother, linking the process of grieving over a loved one with grieving over lived racial trauma and deeper research into historical atrocities, specifically the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II, American intervention, and how my lola witnessed this history. In a similar wandering of imagery, I balance these three pillars of trauma, each informing the other as petals form a magnolia flower, then a magnolia tree—the tree that stood as landmark for my lola's house in Toronto.