Rachel Bridges: I Am Not Your Filipina

In her solo exhibition I'm Not Your Filipina, Rachel Bridges (b. 1982, San Francisco; based in Los Angeles) conjures historical narratives of struggle and resistance through large-scale figurative paintings. A first-generation Filipino American artist, Bridges draws on familial roots and ancestral spirituality to explore the emotional and cultural reverberations of colonialism in the Filipino diaspora. For LAMAG's presentation, Bridges exhibits three paintings from her White Out series: Illuminated by the Subtle Bleeding Light, Sampaguita, and Who Lick a Rare Heart? Inspired by Robert Ryman and Pope.L, Bridges "whites out" her paintings as an act of subversive defiance, confronting the structural violence of the colonial archive and reclaiming fractured histories. The exhibition title, I'm Not Your Filipina, riffs on I Am Not Your Negro, directed by Raoul Peck and based on James Baldwin's unfinished manuscript Remember This House.