Abstract

As an archipelagic nation numbering over 7,000 islands, the Philippines is home to a vast number of cultures and peoples. This diversity means that one’s identity hinged on region, language, or locale, despite the kinship these peoples have historically shared. Spanish and American colonization have only interfered in the Philippines’ heterogenous cultural landscape, which has resulted in a Westernized sense of self fractured from its precolonial and indigenous roots. The Philippines’ exposure to the global market, with foreign powers entering and overseas labourers departing, has rendered it a hotbed of cultural influences that also invites conflict and further dispersion of the country’s sense of identity. As a nation whose cultural identity has been hegemonized by Western society, Filipinx abroad and island-side struggle to piece together elements of what it means to be ‘Filipino’.
Through personal, social, and cultural excavation, Filipinx artists articulate national and diasporic qualities of Filipino identity that subvert the essentialist, colonial narratives historically imposed upon by Western powers. Anchored between martial law (1970s) and the present, I cite the works of Roberto Villanueva, Cian Dayrit, and Club Ate, who use their relationships to place in their work to critique grand narratives to unearth the stories, mythologies, and cultural practices eclipsed by history.