Brandon Aquino Straus
Cocos Nucifera after Fr. Manuel Blanco, 1837, 22” x 22” , Digital Inkjet print, 2025. This is a digitally reconstructed study of a botanical illustration created by Fr. Manuel Blanco for Flora de Filipinas-- a Spanish colonial era documentation of the natural resources of the Philippines.
Situated between the digital, the physical, and the imaginary, my work consists of video, installations, sculpture, and paintings in which I research and examine the cultural amnesia and entangled histories of the United States and the Philippines. In parallel I navigate my own contemporary experiences of diaspora and returning. The vocabulary of my work comes both from turn of the century ethnographic collections, and the language of tourism and leisure. I navigate material culture and anthropology as tools to examine both historical and contemporary representations of the Philippines from artifact to kitsch. I seek to make connections across time that resist the authority of colonial interpretation by recasting narratives of power and cultural inheritance.
Brandon Aquino Straus
Situated between the digital, the physical, and the imaginary, Brandon Aquino Straus’s work consists of video, installations, sculpture, and paintings in which he researches and examines the cultural amnesia and entangled histories of the United States and the Philippines. In parallel, he navigates his own contemporary experiences of diaspora and returning. The vocabulary of work comes from turn of the century ethnographic and naturalist collections, and the language of tourism and leisure. I seek to make connections across time that resist the authority of colonial interpretation by recasting narratives of power and cultural inheritance.