Exhibitions

In this exhibition, the concept of the shadow symbolises the lingering spectres of colonial history that follow the Filipino diaspora—Australia’s fifth-largest migrant community. Artists Celline Mercado, Jermaine Ibarra, and Justyne Allen engage with familiar symbols of domesticity and architecture to explore Filipino identity, cultural visibility, and ancestral legacy. Blending Indigenous Filipino, Western, and hybrid iconographies, their works reflect on a complex past, reclaiming these shadows as part of an evolving decolonial consciousness.

Globally, Filipinos form one of the most widespread diasporas. Within the dislocated space of migration, these artists both reinvent and reflect, acknowledging that Filipino identity remains deeply shaped by the Philippines’ violent history of Spanish and American colonisation, and the political upheavals of the Marcos regime—events that catalysed mass migration and global dispersal. The exhibition’s title is drawn from a bugtong, a Filipino riddle, with the answer being anino—shadow. These shadows of colonial history and injustice linger across time and place, ghost-like. But to hold the hand of your ghost is to face it, befriend it, play with it.

Image: Celine Mercado, Dismantled Bed II, 2024, bedframe wrapped in acrylic wool, stainless steel wire rope.