My piece is featured in @hyperallergic ! “Filipino California: Art and the Filipino Diaspora” was named one of 10 shows to see in LA this August @forestlawnmuseum
Presenting…my largest mural to date! Bloom Loop - 7500 sq ft in East Oakland. It’s my love letter to Oakland, San Francisco, and the Bay Area at large; we are so much more than how the media wants to paint us. From doom to bloom, growth and rebirth is inevitable.
Thank you to my team @joadz_@vampire_frog@aileenagallego , @yochanders for the captures, @pacificamericangroup for the opportunity and the solid hospitality, @zenarts1 for being the ultimate connector.
Also a special shoutout to @rafaelcasal - He put my art on the set of @blindspottingstarz season 2 which ultimately led to this project I hold so dear; my art took a little journey from a fictional Oakland set built in LA, to a very real Oakland building and career milestone ✨
This year marks 25 years since I lost my older half brother (though I never usually say the half part, he was always to me just my brother). It was a car accident, he was 21. When I got the opportunity to create work for a museum in a cemetery, it felt like a perfect fit; it just made sense because so much of my work deals with spirituality and loss. When I lost him at 13 years old it was isolating, it was so hard to relate to other kids with my grief. This happened during a time when I was going through puberty, entering high school, and also beginning to question my beliefs. So over the next following years I spent all of my free time drawing, imagining what heaven looked and felt like. I imagined the moment that the body transmutates into something more, and I wondered—at what point does the soul leave the body? What does that look like? Does the soul just become magic, vapor? I thought a lot about the Shroud of Turin (my mom had a photo of it on display at our house) and what people believed to be the imprint of Jesus’s body on a piece of fabric. So when I saw this beautiful corridor at @forestlawnmuseum I knew I had to create my own version of the shroud, with a Filipino twist. I wove strips of fabric from a discarded piece into the shroud as a nod to the banig, a handwoven Filipino floor mat. Where so many generations of people sleep, eat, pray. 🕊️
Ascension Novena (Shroud of Turon), mixed media on organza fabric
‘The Wheel’ is a new piece I’m showing with @casscontemporary this Saturday in Nashville. In my meditation practice, a recurring image I’ve been seeing is a wheel (or multiple spinning wheels) reminding me of the Samsara Wheel—the endless cycle of life death and rebirth. So what a fun synchronicity to see the wheel on the final episode of BEEF.
The piece is for Paint It Forward, a show where established artists choose an emerging artist into the show, so I invited my dear @sarahnassart . And the wheel continues to turn 🎡
The baby monitor footage of Amber dancing to MJ got so much love that I had to share this one too. I promise I’ll get back to the regular art content soon 😆 #michaeljackson #jaafarjackson #michael
Living the dream ✨ welcome to The Hangar ✈️
Almost 10 months in, we are finally reaching the finish line with the buildout. Can’t wait to start welcoming some of you in here soon.
The Dangerous album by Michael Jackson was the first major project to come out of Larrabee North @larrabeestudios in 1991. All of this MJ talk reminded me that I have a couple major pieces there, the historic sound studios where so many Grammy award-winning records have been made. In Studio 1 I have a piece ‘Vapor Blossoms, Liquid Swords (2020)’. On the exterior of the building is my piece ‘Sirens’ that I painted in 2014, and I shot my cover of LA Weekly’s People issue right in front of it . My style has evolved soo much since then but I love that this piece memorialized that moment in time. Thanks to the incredible @mannymarroquin for the support over the years ⚡️
CHANNELING✨
I’ve only recently been calling what I do in the studio “channeling”. That beginning phase of my work when I just improvise, freestyle and get into the flow state, I realized I’ve been generating my own energy with my body’s movement in the hopes of attracting an idea. I’m not actually analyzing the abstract background; I’m merely gesturing and scribbling to clear my mind to allow ideas to flow #michaeljackson #prince #inspirarion #channeling #bigmagic
Photo dump like a 🚚🚚🚚 last couple months // continued construction on the studio, booked major projects, spraycation in Miami, started (and ended) a brand with my best friend and our 90s teen heartthrob crush (!!), found out I might be decent at golf, using my mind to view other locations remotely, now brainstorming name and costume ideas for my superhueman transformation
