In Mourning the Loss of a Family Tree, a leafless acacia tree stands for my family tree in the diaspora. Without its leaves and flowers, the acacia in diaspora is a shadow of what it could have been had it not migrated away from its homeland. Its rope-like branches twist and turn on the buckling, rugged surface of the handmade abaca paper.

Drawn on a surface of abaca, the bare tree claims space and attention. The fiber plant abaca originates from the Philippines and is used locally to make textiles and banknotes. But, since the 1500s, abaca had been primarily grown to be exploited and exported. Considered the strongest natural fiber in the world, abaca was mass-produced in the Philippines during Spanish and U.S. colonization to be processed into ropes for Western warships. In this sense, the work, Mourning the Loss of a Family Tree, reverses those colonizing efforts by returning abaca in a new form back to the Philippines, where it was sourced.