In the series of mixed-media works titled Tracing the Absences in Our Histories, I use carbon transfer paper to manually trace historical and familial documents from the late 19th and 20th centuries, such as the Treaty of Paris of 1898, Emilio Jacinto’s Kartilya ng Katipunan, and my grandmother’s certificate of baptism. I trace the spaces between letterforms and visually warp certain texts to highlight the absences and distortions in historical records. Through the slow act of tracing by hand, the series makes visible the gaps, erasures, and exclusions in written histories, leaving room to imagine what we cannot access from the archives.

Materials: Series of mixed-media on panel with frame
Dimensions: Varies
Date: 2026