I made Kamalayan Playground to think through the relationship/power dynamic between the Philippines and the United States. 

The piece hanging from the ceiling is my interpretation of a pabitin, a Filipino childhood game in which a bamboo grid is strung with toys and treats, suspended in the air, and alternately lowered and raised by an adult as children jump up and down to grab their candy or prize. Instead of the more common square grid, my pabitin extends in length, evoking monkey bars. 

I wanted to draw attention to the “candy” that the US offered to the Filipino people to justify American occupation. I included historical images, photographs, and advertisements to show the propaganda that was fed to us. 

For instance, you might hear someone express gratitude that the US made education accessible to the masses, but it also led to the dominance of English as a national language. Or that the US gave us job opportunities overseas but those opportunities also meant family separation and employer exploitation. 

In this close-up image, I shared an advertisement from 1899 that conflates whiteness with cleanliness. It says “the first step towards lightening the white man’s burden is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness”. 

I also made a hopscotch game out of basahan, which are cloths or rags that are handwoven from scrap fabric and handmade on a DIY loom. Instead of numbers, the basahan squares spell out k-a-m-a-l-a-y-a-n, the Tagalog word for consciousness. 

My pabitin monkey bars and hopscotch basahan are a playground, which I see as a space of learning and transformation that’s about the childlike instincts to question everything—an unapologetic curiosity and ability to discern the truth about one’s reality by demanding to learn why something is the norm—when stepping (or jumping) into political consciousness.