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As I've concluded my main project for my residency, I'm now sharing the rest of my photography, research & experience during my month-long ARROZidency. If you are just starting here, I recommend scrolling to the bottom to start at the beginning. View from a computer for the full experience! As another reminder, I've split up the work from my residency into 2 separate tags: For my main residency project only, visit: For an extended roundup of my research during my residency, visit: Prior to arriving in San Francisco, I was notified that we would be having a studio visit from a curator at the Asian Art Museum, just a few days after I settled into the studio. It was a bit stressful to prepare some work to present in advance! However, it was also exciting and satisfying. As a residency participant, I was happy I received the full experience that was advertised: the opportunity to connect with curators & other artists. Of course, I could have gone simple & just made a few prints or brought in some older work, but I like making my life more difficult. 🥴 That also wouldn't have really resembled my aesthetic, & I wanted to present something closer to the type of work that I actually make. By now, most people know that my work is mainly lens-based, but in the last decade I've been thinking a lot about grief & offerings to the metaphysical & what this can look like — so, like I've done in the past, I wanted the two practices to meet. A friend pointed out recently that I use a lot of red in my work, & I haven't been able to stop thinking about it ever since. For this installation, I wanted to stick to a color palette of red, gold & black as closely as possible, similar to the riso prints I made for this project. And although it may seem like hoarding, I promise there's a method to my madness & a reason why I collect so much ephemera on any trips I take, & it's because I know they'll be used again for an installation at some point or repurposed in some way. The installation was untitled, but it combined my newer photography with ephemera collected from recent trips to the Philippines, with each tier serving as a mini altar and offering to each place or item. original mock-up & Final InstallationPictured left is the mock-up of the installation that I'd originally envisioned. As you can see, it had slight edits later, as well as some additions of items I didn't originally photograph for the mock-up. When we think of altars & the spirit realms, we often think of tiers, namely the 3 tiers of the underworld, physical world, & spirit world. Originally, I'd wanted to create a 3-tier installation, which would have made more sense for me, but wall space was limited & I wanted a decent amount of spacing in between columns. I also think a lot about tiers when thinking about the homeland, & the tiered rice paddies throughout our region that have been tended to by generations of ancestors. Everything from the collection of ephemera to the size choice is a reference to the maximalism & space limitations many of us experienced in working class immigrant households. Our family always wanted to maximise any small space to display as many memories as they could share, whether it was small printed photos from family gatherings, or prayer cards wedged into a corner of a frame. Click any image below to enlarge. Installation shots were photographed with my Nikon ZF & a 24-70mm lens.
EphemeraMost pictured here were used in the installation. Some ended up not being used, but I photographed them for the purposes of including them in mock-up designs. Some additional misc ephemera ended up being added at the last minute, because I randomly found them later in my junk collection (sadly, not pictured below). I've always been in the practice of collecting ephemera from trips, both as memory keepsakes & also to think about how they could be repurposed in the future. While not all that is shown below ended up being used in the installation, each had its own significance that I look back on fondly. Here's a description list for each item. Click on an image below for its corresponding number, but it will go from left to right. 1. This rosary wasn’t collected in the Philippines. It was left on an altar I made for my late friend Xam, placed there by his mother. It goes on every altar installation I create now, & even though he is gone, it's my small way of inviting him. 2 & 7. Prayer booklets & prayer card in Bisaya & English, & mini statue that I purchased from a religious souvenir shop opposite the basilica in Cebu, where I also purchased my Santo Niño statue (#4). 3. Plane tickets on my first ever trip to Cebu — hopefully not the last trip, because there's still so much more I need to explore on that island! 4. Small wooden Santo Niño statue I purchased at the religious souvenir shop opposite the basilica in Cebu. This is the same statue I brought with me to get blessed during the two Santo Niño Fiestas photographed in my VENERATING AN ICON photo essay project. 5-6, 11. Prayer booklet & prayer cards I purchased at a religious souvenir shop at the Namacpacan Church in Luna, La Union — home of the largest image of the Mama Mary (Apo Baket) across the archipelago. More on this below. 8. Ceramic Santo Niño sculpture I found at a public market while shopping for woven items in San Fernando, La Union. 9. My memory is hazy, but I think I bought this rosary at the religious souvenir shop at Namacpacan Church, or possibly the one in Cebu. 10 & 13. Mama Mary keychain & screenprinted Ilokano prayer cloth from the religious souvenir shop at Namacpacan Church. My original mock-up incorporated the prayer cloth, but the size was so much bigger than everything else, it threw the design off-balance, so I scratched it. 12. Receipt from a clothing shop near the basilica in Cebu. Much like the Vatican in Italy, they JUST started enforcing a dress code only a couple of days before we visited. They wouldn't let me in, because they could see the backs of my knees! I had to find a shop nearby that sold long skirts that I could put over my dress. 14-16. Magnets we bought on the street next to the basilica in Cebu. I ended up not using any of these in the final installation, & instead ended up giving some to my residency host. All of these were photographed on a table outside with my iPhone, then I uploaded them into Canva & used the background remover tool. 😅                 PHOTO PRINTS:Printed digital photos in order of appearance from left column to right column in the installation. Left column of photos were from my 2024 visit to Cebu City to visit the original image of the Santo Niño de Cebu. Left column of photos were from my 2024 visit to Luna, La Union to visit the Apo Baket. You can read more about both trips, the history, research & significance of them in my photo series Return Call. I knew that for this installation, I wanted to include photography from my trip to Cebu, because it was closely related to the work I would be doing in my residency, photographing the Santo Niño Fiestas. However, I decided to include photos of my recent trip to Luna, because similarly to the Santo Niño de Cebu, the Mama Mary in Luna also has miraculous lore behind her dating back to the Spanish colonial period. However, while it's true that her existence in Luna is miraculous, she gets nowhere near as much tourism as the Santo Niño de Cebu does, & seems more like just a local legend instead of an international wonder. I wanted to juxtapose the two, because while I may be Filipina, Cebu & the Bisayas are not my culture, as someone with origins in the Ilokano provinces of the Northern Philippines. I wanted to include something closer to our culture to be more representative of the local history of the region we're from. Photos 1-4 were from Cebu. Photos 5-9 were from Luna. Click an image below to enlarge.          Studio Visits:Lastly, I got to have a few studio visits with some local artists & others. This residency was so busy, because nearly every day I was working on something, going somewhere, meeting someone, or having someone over for a studio visit. Here are some photos from some of the visits I had: Photos by Adrian Discipulo. It was exciting to meet Adrian for multiple reasons. Before starting the residency, I was raising funds & selling some of my work left over from an art fair a few months prior. Adrian ended up contacting me online for one of the prints. When asking for his mailing address, I saw he was based in NorCal & told him I would be there for a month, if he wanted to stop by the studio, because I appreciate trying to meet my buyers when I can. It eases my mind to know who I'm selling to is a decent person & the work will go to a good home. Anyways, he ended up coming by. He is also a photographer, which was fun to have someone to talk about gear with! After getting to know each other a bit, we also learnt that our families are both from the same province in the Philippines, from neighboring towns! The town where my parents went to school & university, next to the town where they were born. It's always exciting to meet someone else from the same province, let alone town! We also got to check out some exhibition openings for San Francisco Art Week over at the Minnesota Street Project galleries, just opposite the studios. I will share these photos later! The soft quality of Adrian's photos was my fav. Thank you for these!
Photos by Ellie Lopez. Ellie is a NorCal-based poet I got to work with on a photography x poetry program for my project MATA ART GALLERY. She ended up coming by to visit & bought some remaining prints. We ended up going on an impromptu visit to the San Francisco botanical garden, where we learnt we both love pro-wrestling, LOL! We had dinner at a vegan restaurant near the garden & ended the night with boba. It was great to spend 1:1 time with someone I kept in touch with online for so long. She was so kind, supportive & generous. Thank you for visiting!
Lastly, my older brother was kind enough to come up to visit me for a few days. He has a fond connection to the Bay, since he lived there for 7 years. We had so much fun doing classic San Francisco stuff, like riding the streetcars (which I haven't done since I was a kid), riding the ferris wheel, eating seafood & ice cream at the pier, & driving up to Petaluma to visit our cousin who had just given birth. He also helped me deinstall & pack up my studio, which felt so bittersweet. The month was so busy, it truly went by so fast. Silly pics from my brother's iPhone below, because I can't always be serious about everything all the time! If you know, you know. *queues entrance music*
Additional photos & research from the rest of my residency are forthcoming & will be tagged under ARROZidency.
Make sure to keep checking this space, follow me on Instagram, subscribe to my YouTube channel, or subscribe to my newsletter for updates on my blog posts, projects, or upcoming programs. If you've read this far, thank you! Please feel free to share your thoughts or any questions in the comments.
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This is the last part of my 3-part series, VENERATING AN ICON. I originally was not planning to make a part 3, but recently came across the original proposal for this project & thought it would be fun to share. It's fun to look back at how I envisioned the project panning out & to have accomplished what I proposed!
Again, for anyone who's just hopping on to this series, I recommend scrolling to the bottom of & starting from part 1. In case you missed it, I've split up the work from my residency into 2 separate tags: For my main residency project only, visit:
For an extended roundup of my research during my residency, visit:
Check out my proposal deck. After viewing the project, what do you think? Did I accomplish what I proposed, or is there more you would have liked to see?
Additional photos & research from the rest of my residency are forthcoming & will be tagged under ARROZidency.
Make sure to keep checking this space, follow me on Instagram, subscribe to my YouTube channel, or subscribe to my newsletter for updates on my blog posts, projects, or upcoming programs. If you've read this far, thank you! Please feel free to share your thoughts or any questions in the comments. This is the last section of the second part of my VENERATING AN ICON documentary photo essay. If you are starting here, I recommend scrolling to the bottom of this series & starting from part 1. In case you missed it, I've split up the work from my residency into 2 separate tags: For my main residency project only, visit: For an extended roundup of my research during my residency, visit: For this project, I was really excited to go back to my documentary photo roots. In my earlier photo work, I focused on documenting multicultural communities, sometimes with a special focus on their spiritual practices. I've documented many communities from Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism, Khmer Buddhism, Krishna Consciousness, to precolonial ritualistic practices of Mesoamerica, to Native American pow wows. Religion and spirituality weren’t central to my upbringing, but it was always present. Though I wasn’t raised Catholic, I was excited to document a community tied to my culture & the history of the Philippines. There's some major reasons why my parents decided not to raise me religious, which was a bold move for immigrant parents of their generation, but I'm grateful for that choice they made in raising me. Their choice allowed me to deepen my curiosity for diverse spiritual practices & led me to discover, study & practice my own spiritual & metaphysical beliefs in my day-to-day life & art. Anyways, a lot has changed since my early documentary photo days. I first started off shooting strictly black & white film. I eventually started shooting color film once I lost access to a lab & discovered color film was cheaper to process. A couple of years ago I decided to expand my toolkit and purchased a digital camera for the first time, which I've enjoyed practicing & playing with. I recently took an advanced lighting class & hoped to expand my toolkit even further. One thing I can say for sure is that these are some of the hardest photos I've ever edited. The church banquet hall had all sorts of different tinted overhead lightbulbs. I had to do so much masking to color correct different parts of the room in these photos, which was a time-consuming challenge on top of not compromising the high saturation aesthetic I go for in my color work. All this to say, after taking this lighting class, I have a new appreciation for using flash & wonder if this could have been remedied had I brought my flash with me this time? Flash still intimidated me at that time, & after taking this class, I hope I can apply the skills I've learnt to continue documenting cultural events like these & producing the best images I can each time. I'm trying not to be scared of flash anymore! Check out the photos & let me know what you would have done differently! Images were photographed using my Nikon ZF & 24-70mm lens. Click on an image below to enlarge. I recommend viewing from a computer for the full experience.  Even more people brought their Santo Niños this time & it was so cute seeing the diverse kinds that people owned! Some titas even shared interesting stories with me about how they came to own their Santo Niños. One tita told me she allegedly rescued her Santo Niño from the trash. 🤣 She legit told me this. Y'all think she was telling the truth or was she lying at church?
 
 
 
This is where all the titas got up & started dancing with their Santo Niños! France on the right with the sheer shawl dancing with the Santo Niño I brought from Cebu. 🕺🏻
       Additional photos & research from the rest of my residency are forthcoming & will be tagged under ARROZidency.
Make sure to keep checking this space, follow me on Instagram, subscribe to my YouTube channel, or subscribe to my newsletter for updates on my blog posts, projects, or upcoming programs. If you've read this far, thank you! Please feel free to share your thoughts or any questions in the comments.
The second part of this 3-part series is split into 3 sections, as it's quite long. If you are starting here, I recommend scrolling to the bottom of this series & starting from part 1.
Because these blog posts cannot support video embeds if there is a lot of media content, here is a short video from my YouTube channel that documents part of the Sinulog performance at the second Santo Niño Fiesta we attended. It was so cute seeing the titas get up & dance with their Santo Niños! The last part will have photos of the performance, but it just hits different watching the movements & hearing the sounds of the music & singing. Video was filmed on my iPhone.
And again, in case you missed it, I've split up the work from my residency into 2 separate tags:
For my main residency project only, visit:
For an extended roundup of my research during my residency, visit:
2.3 will be the last section of part 2 of my main residency project series!
Make sure to keep checking this space, follow me on Instagram, subscribe to my YouTube channel, or subscribe to my newsletter for updates on my blog posts, projects, or upcoming programs. If you've read this far, thank you! Please feel free to share your thoughts or any questions in the comments. The second part of this 2-part series will, in itself, be split into 3 sections, as it's quite long. If you are starting here, I recommend scrolling to the bottom of this series & starting from part 1. And, in case you missed it, I've split up the work from my residency into 2 separate tags: For my main residency project only, visit: For an extended roundup of my research during my residency, visit: The second Santo Niño Fiesta we visited was at Saint Augustine Catholic Church in South San Francisco (which is its own city separate from the City of San Francisco). SSF is the city next to San Bruno, where the first fiesta took place. It is also adjacent to Daly City, where a large FilAm community resides. South San Francisco was just a BART ride away from where I was staying in San Francisco proper. While the interior architecture of this church wasn't as interesting as the first church, there was a lot more to look at within the exterior church complex itself. It reminded me a lot of the churches I've visited in the Philippines. The church was also a lot more spacious, with more room for the Sinulog performance later on. I'll share those photos in parts 2.2-2.3! This event was similar to the last one, where they had a procession for the Santo Niño, Mass, & people brought their own Santo Niños to be blessed. It was actually very exciting to see more people bring their images, & to see the many diverse kinds! Images were photographed using my Nikon ZF & 24-70mm lens. Click on an image below to enlarge. I recommend viewing from a computer for the full experience.
   
   
Sections 2.2 & 2.3 of part 2 are forthcoming, which will contain both photo & video!
Make sure to keep checking this space, follow me on Instagram, subscribe to my YouTube channel, or subscribe to my newsletter for updates on my blog posts, projects, or upcoming programs. If you've read this far, thank you! Please feel free to share your thoughts or any questions in the comments. 2025 was an unpredictable year, but one of the best I've ever had. After losing my job in September 2024, I experienced a prolonged period of unemployment. Instead of immediately seeking new work, I chose to take time off and use my savings to take a risk & prioritise my creative growth — something I recognise is a massive privilege. In February 2024, I had a visit at my home studio from the brilliant France Viana. At this point in my life, I had been ill for nearly four months, visiting doctors and specialists, and undergoing extensive medical testing. I needed some good news. Before her visit, France & I were connecting via email through a mutual friend, & she ended up making her way down from the Bay & took the time to visit me during her very busy LA itinerary. We enjoyed tea & mochi on the deck, connected over the type of work we both make & themes we enjoy exploring. After learning we were interested in many of the same things, namely spirituality & the metaphysical, she generously extended a month-long artist residency at her studio at the Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco. I was elated. During my ARROZidency, I focused on a documentary photo essay series centering the annual Santo Niño fiestas in the Bay Area — a celebration most of my NorCal friends didn't even know existed! This project then served as an extension of my work studying the Philippine-American diaspora, specifically the Californian diaspora. Before the project, I did some background research in the Philippines and visited THE original Santo Niño de Cebu. I wanted to know why the Santo Niño was such a venerated icon in both the islands & the diaspora. When it finally came down to starting the residency & the project, I appreciated the background research I did, as it informed a different lens I couldn't have gone in with, had I not done any previous research or traced back the origins. Fast-forward to today (January 2026), it took me over a year to finally complete the main part of this project (this does not include the extended research I did while in the Bay!). Following my ARROZidency, I immediately left for the Philippines where I lived for two months & completed another month-long residency (with work I'm also trying to finish!), then came back to the US to another drawn-out sequence of unexpected health issues. This has been one of the most challenging projects I've worked on, as the photos were incredibly challenging to edit! But, more on that later. I'm excited to finally get this project off the ground & share about the work I made. I've put together 2 tags for my 2025 ARROZidency: For my main residency project only, visit: For an extended roundup of my research during my residency, visit: Since my ARROZidency project is quite long, I’ve broken it up into 3 parts, with part 2 further divided into 3 sections. Some background on part 1: We attended 2 Santo Niño Fiestas, which I was not expecting, but was happy I got to experience both. We got into a bit of a kerfuffle with the first fiesta, because we were instructed on one location & were never informed that the event was being relocated. We were already running on Filipino time as it was, so we arrived at the location we thought we had to report to, only to find that no one was there! After getting a hold of the organisers, we were told that the location moved. 😅 It was a bit of a mess, but we eventually made it. I hadn’t attended Mass since we buried my dad in the Philippines. Though I don’t share the Catholic Church’s beliefs and took on this project as a documentary exercise, I’ve always admired Catholic artistry and was genuinely excited when we arrived on location. The first part of this series took place at Saint Robert's Catholic Church in San Bruno, California. Images were photographed using my Nikon ZF & 24-70mm lens. Click on an image below to enlarge. I recommend viewing from a computer for the full experience. 
  
 The Feast Day of the Santo Niño is typically celebrated on the third Sunday of January in the Philippines. The date celebrates the day the icon of the Holy Child was gifted to the Philippines by Ferdinand Magellan in the 1500s, marking the introduction of Christianity to the archipelago. This date could be confused with the day the image of the Holy Child was discovered in Cebu, but you can read more about these dates on the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño de Cebu website (the basilica in Cebu where the original Santo Niño lives). In the Bay Area of Northern California, Catholic FilAm devotees come from all over the region to attend the annual Santo Niño Fiestas. They bring their own Santo Niño statues, which the priests go around to bless with holy water following the Mass. I brought my own Santo Niño, which I purchased at a gift shop opposite the basilica in Cebu. After the blessing & conclusion of the Mass, it was followed by Sinulog dancers. Sinulog is a festival held in Cebu every third Sunday of January, celebrating the Santo Niño & the Christianization of the Philippines. Though originally a religious celebration, Cebu locals have shared with me that Sinulog has become much like Mardi Gras, drawing people from across the islands and around the world who come less for its religious meaning and more so to party. For this Santo Niño Fiesta, I felt very lucky to experience it, because I was told this was the first time they ever invited Sinulog dancers to perform after the Mass!     
      
  Part 2 in itself will be broken up into 3 different sections, as it was even longer than this one! But the images are more exciting (in my opinion), & I'll have some video to share as well.
Make sure to keep checking this space, follow me on Instagram, subscribe to my YouTube channel, or subscribe to my newsletter for updates on my blog posts, projects, or upcoming programs. If you've read this far, thank you! Please feel free to share your thoughts or any questions in the comments. |
NICA AQUINOIn this space I'll share digital previews of my film photography, updates on new artworks in progress, upcoming programs, inspiration & my other misc interests. Archives
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