Lolas by Ryan Tacata

Lolas is a performance installation that explores notions of cultural assimilation and resistance through one lola’s garden, an assemblage of found materials, religious icons and constructed identities. Lola, the Filipino/Tagalog word for grandmother, serves as the center of Tacata’s new work, which explores the complicated and sacrosanct figure of the grandmother in Philippine culture as well as an inheritance of racial discrimination, Catholic guilt and queer identities.

Using photographs of his lola’s garden and objects gathered after her death, the artist reconstructs her garden in the Asian Art Museum as a site for live tableaus; poetic readings pulled from her writings on faith, love and death; and a stage for other lolas or lola figures from the local Filipino community to perform.