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# Thea Canlas

Provocative, pithy objects

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://theacanlas.art/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Pages

- [Work](https://theacanlas.art/)
- [Still Life (Longing) Series](https://theacanlas.art/work/still-life-longing/) - In Still Life: Longing, I create a still life informed by the gaze of displacement and nostalgia. I also wanted to emphasize how early colonial economies still inform modern global foodways. Presenting it as an installation within a commercial refrigerator was key to recalling the industrial mechanisms of global commerce and exchange. The selection of
- [Maalaala Mo Kaya? (Would You Remember?)/Multo (Apparitions) Series](https://theacanlas.art/maalaala-mo-kaya/) - Overseas contract workers (OCWs), also known as overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), are Philippine citizens who work abroad, under contract, for a set amount of time. These jobs offer an opportunity for higher wages from countries due to favorable exchange rates when spent in the Philippines. In addition, the Philippine government has encouraged this exportation of labor
- [My Filipino Baby](https://theacanlas.art/work/my-filipino-baby/) - When I think of how Filipina identity and commerce intersect, I think of the sustained narratives around sexual labor and exploitation of exoticized brown female bodies. Mail-order brides, military-controlled sex workers, and domestic helpers are constantly under threat of abuse. Philippine news and media in the 1980s and 1990s were rife with stories of exploited
- [Multo (Apparitions)](https://theacanlas.art/work/multo-apparitions/) - Because of the hidden nature of domestic work, the abuses of power that Philippine OFW domestic workers endure are largely unknown outside of the Philippines. In Value Studies: Multo (Apparitions), I wanted to highlight the invisibility of this labor force and question how we got to this moment of large-scale exportation of Philippine labor. I
- [Flag Studies Series](https://theacanlas.art/work/flag-studies/) - Flag Studies is a meditation on statecraft and the ways in which Philippine national identity is invented and imagined. This series also aims to critique the state-sanctioned "imaginings" of Philippine national identity, its ties to American imperial rule, and how its contemporary articulations evolve within the Philippine diaspora. For these studies, I use different types
- [About](https://theacanlas.art/about/) - Thea Canlas is a Filipina-American artist whose conceptual, research-driven work explores the entanglements of diasporic Philippine identity through sculptural objects, installations, and digital media. Her current body of work, Value Studies, traces how colonial economies and contemporary racial capitalism have impacted our perceptions of collective and individual human value. Thea received her BFA in Fibers
- [<i>Wish You Were Her </i>Series](https://theacanlas.art/work/wish-you-were-her-series/) - Wish You Were Her Series2021 Digital print Wish You Were Her is a series of photographs documenting the first iteration of the brooms used in My Filipino Baby. This initial study retains the phrase “Export Quality” on the broom handle, commonly found on walis tambo sold in tourist shops in the Philippines. The walis tambo
- [Uniforms](https://theacanlas.art/work/uniforms/) - Export Quality (Value Studies: Uniforms). 2023Machine embroidered piña cloth, white sand, sugar, pearls, and human teeth. Value Studies is a series of works looking at the entanglements of globalized economies, racial capitalism, post-colonial statecraft, and the curation of cultural value, through the lens of Filipino transnational identity. Export Quality (Value Studies: Uniforms) traces the connections
- [My Name is Maria, Too.](https://theacanlas.art/work/my-name-is-maria-too/) - My Name Is Maria, Too2023Skin whitening soap Multiple Virgin Mary statues made with skin-whitening soap, presented neatly in a row, is a way to convey the interconnectedness of seemingly disparate aspects of whiteness and the colonial enterprise. I have been interested in how religion has shaped ideas of race and gender and was used as
- [Value Studies (Material Studies)](https://theacanlas.art/work/value-studies-material-studies/) - Material Studies