The 2023 exhibition You Are Welcome brought 26 Filipino American artists together in Los Angeles through painting, sculpture, photography and mixed media.
Organised by Tambayan Collective and curated by Edmund Arevalo and Tim Obar, the exhibition focused on cultural heritage, migration and the continuing evolution of Filipino American identity.
Many practices within one diaspora
Participating artists included Jared Abayata, Clarisse Abelarde, Trixi Agiao, Alex J. Cabalu, Alfred Camacho, Jon Steven Camacho, Rimski Chua, Vianca David, Jonji Decastro and Tomas De Los Reyes.
The wider group also included Amy Doyo, John Yoyogi Fortes, Dj Javier, Krylik, Bodeck Luna, Mary Rose Cabarrubias Mendoza, Dee Jae Paeste, Db Quiero, Jimmy Quinzon, Candace Reyes and others.
The varied media prevented the exhibition from presenting Filipino American art as one visual style.
Instead, heritage and diaspora appeared through separate personal histories, symbols, materials and forms of contemporary experience.
Hospitality as a curatorial statement
The title You Are Welcome suggested both an invitation to the public and a claim to cultural presence.
Filipino American artists were not positioned as temporary guests within the wider arts scene. The exhibition asserted their place within it while inviting dialogue with audiences from other backgrounds.
The two-day presentation was brief, but its large number of participants created a concentrated view of a creative community often dispersed across different fields and venues.
The exhibition’s value lay in the collective platform. It allowed established and emerging artists to appear together while preserving the differences within Filipino American experience.
Rather than defining identity through a single national image, You Are Welcome treated culture as something carried, changed and remade through migration and artistic practice.