Because my family members continue to be split between the Philippines and the US, we have not had dinner as a whole family in decades. We Gather, We Remember, We Make an Offering speaks to this geographical and psychic splitting between my immediate family members. Absent of sitters, it features six paper-mache plates arranged on a tabletop with torn lottery scratchers scattered about. Fractured by river-like fissures, the dining table appears to hold space for us to share a meal, yet its broken terrain suggests gaps in memory and the ultimate impossibility of that family gathering. Among the offerings are fruits and vegetables—ampalaya, sibuyas, mangga—yet as casts in papier mache, they are inedible, tinted like ash. They are accompanied by tree branches and Virgin Mary statuettes, like shadow resemblances of the motherland. 

Materials: Torn lottery scratch-off tickets, paper pulp, paper-mache casts, graphite, and foam board in six parts on a dining table
Dimensions: 34 inches x 63 inches x 31.5 inches
Date: 2024