A creative place-keeping project debuts in Homeroom by Little Manila Queens Bayanihan Arts (LMQBA, est. 2020), a grassroots collective of artists and cultural workers who celebrate the diasporic Filipino communities in Woodside, Queens, and throughout New York. Little Manila Queens: Mabuhay! examines the social impact of migration policies that have deployed Filipino workers outside the Philippines, with a focus on the Woodside Little Manila neighborhood. Exported labor from the Philippines has alleviated a shortage of healthcare workers in New York for over fifty years. Many of these care-workers have made their home in the neighborhood surrounding Elmhurst Hospital, which was the most severely impacted care facility of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020.
LMQBA emerged as a resource and amplifier of the experiences of nurses, homecare aids, childcare providers, teachers, domestic workers, and other essential care-workers who continue to experience exhaustion in a strained healthcare system. The organization embraces an ethos of compassion in their art-making, centering anticolonial frameworks and bayanihan, a collective civic spirit. For this project, participating artists created films, murals, banners, and dances in collaboration with members of the Philippine diaspora in Queens.
Organized by Elena Ketelsen González, Assistant Curator, MoMA PS1, and Janggo Mahmud, Public Programs and Community Engagement Fellow, MoMA PS1, in collaboration with Jaclyn Reyes and Xenia Diente, Lead Artists, Little Manila Queens Bayanihan Arts.
