Fil-Am (n)
Trying to define my relationship to my Filipino-American identity
Non-narrative animation.
Description
When brainstorming ideas for this piece, I knew I wanted to take advantage of the triptych: having three distinct opportunities to view something all at once. I kept coming back to things that come in threes, and the definition of a noun like “a person, place, or thing” stuck with me. Something I’ve always found challenging to define is my relationship to my Filipino-American identity, and I don’t think it’s an uncommon experience to feel “not Filipino enough” or to feel a bit disconnected to that part of my identity. But more recently, I’ve been reflecting on ways that my Filipino-ness does show up in my life in ways that seem easy to gloss over, and I’ve been finding joy in sharing those moments of re-discovery. Here, I tried defining that experience in the people, places, and things that make me feel most Filipino, or most connected to that identity.
Process
After identifying photos of the people, places, and things that I wanted to feature, I cropped out the negative spaces and applied a monochrome filter in Photoshop. I specifically chose red, blue, and yellow, as these are the three colors featured on the Philippine flag. Then, using these images, I created three distinct GIFs each with a different time interval. This way, the triptych would display different combinations of a person, place, and thing at different times, connecting people, places, and things that might otherwise seem disjoint.