"wa-ta-wat", Anak ng Lupang Hinirang
by Khim Hipol
bachelor of fine arts, photography major
Third Year
Anak ng Lupang Hinirang (Child of the Chosen Land) is a photographic series that uses the body and symbolic objects tied to Filipino national identity to capture a profound and intense feeling of patriotism and nationalism.
As a Filipino national who lives and works in Canada, I am aware of the heavy history of colonization here, which mirrors the colonization of my home country. This series explores the complicated history of colonization in the Philippines and the way in which this history has infiltrated our national identity.
In my photographs, the Philippine flag, the pañuelo, reflects the legacy of Spanish colonizers. The crown symbolizes beauty pageants, which continue to be popular in the Philippines and come from the influence of American colonizers, reinforcing Western beauty standards. These objects, integrated with the body, investigate Filipino national identity, employing familiar tropes of identity to rearticulate and question each icon and the histories it bears. The body performs together with the symbols to subvert the standard, patriotic reading of the objects.
The resulting images encourage viewers to question the origins of the pictured individuals and the true meanings of the objects they display on their bodies.
