SF/Arts Curator Insight

The SFAC Gallery joins two other local venues to mount a massive retrospective of Tenderloin-born, Filipino American artist, educator, and activist Carlos Villa, using his 1980 performance titled "Ritual" as its starting point. "Ritual" centered Villa's body as a site of "border culture," highlighting the complex intersection of Asian, African, and Oceanic influences intertwined in Filipino traditions, while the artist nodded to American Abstract Expressionism by creating an "action painting" from the movements and materials of the performance. SFAC spotlights Villa's reinvention during the 1980s and '90s when the focus of his practice, which utilized a huge range of media including paint, wood, feathers, and blood, began reflecting on the experiences of the Manong, the first generation of Filipinos to migrate to the U.S. Villa's artistic evolution reveals cultures as open systems "in the constant process of transformation, redefinition, and re-contextualization,” an important reminder given the tenor of contemporary cultural debate.