rooted
This piece brings together four portraits: my maternal grandmother, my paternal grandmother, my mother, and myself. All are depicted around the same age, yet their lives and experiences differ from mine in ways I can only begin to grasp. As a Filipino-American, I hold deep respect for these matriarchs—each of them has shaped me in ways both seen and unseen. Still, there’s a distance that lingers, an awareness that my roots grow from a soil I never fully touched.
The portraits are reduction woodcuts, framed to reflect the space between connection and separation. My grandmothers and mother rest within ovals, a form that feels familiar, contained, and intimate, while I am set within a rectangle—an enclosure that subtly distances me. The layering technique underscores this sense of connection, with my mother and me composed of five layers, and my grandmothers of four. The layers represent not only the depth of what I know of them but also the complexity of a relationship that, for me, is both inherited and lost in translation.
Through this work, I explore the quiet tension between lineage and individuality, between honoring those who came before me and the subtle, unspoken distance that defines my experience.