Ryan Frigillana
Manong
2023 En Foco Fellowship Exhibition
Oct 3 - Nov 2, 2024
Contemplating the legacy of Filipinx migration to the United States, Manong explores family, faith, and loss in the diaspora as centered on the life and experiences of my ailing mother.
Emigrating alone from the Philippines to Long Island, New York in the late 1980’s, my mother, Myrna, would work as a nurse in the U.S healthcare system for over thirty years—a period marked by familial separation, bodily sacrifice, and loneliness, but driven by the prospect of opportunity in America. Long retired, her health notably declined following a sobering diagnosis in 2023, a cost attributed to the demands of a grueling career. I began making work in response to the fear and anxiety I felt, and to reconcile with the uncertainty of our time together. These pictures form a macrocosmic meditation on diasporic grief and resilience, honoring my mother’s story within a broader spectrum of sociopolitical history.
The title, Manong, pays homage to the first major wave of Filipino migrants to immigrate to the U.S. in the early Twentieth Century forming the largest agricultural labor force of the West Coast. Their collective experiences and hardships form the entry point for reflecting on my family’s own displacement. Images created with my parents in Southaven Mississippi coalesce with snapshots from my mother’s first solitary years in New York, alongside corresponding photographs from relatives in the homeland. Between farm laborers to countless Filipino nurses making their way abroad, I am interested in bridging notions of home and belonging within a multigenerational context.
My mother used the camera to memorialize and affirm her faith in the American Dream. I consider my images to also be a form of devotion: visual whispers of my hopes, fears, and desires relating to the people I love and this life we navigate. To photograph my family, to fix them in time and place, is an act of prayer—I am pleading, “Stay with me, always”. It is a prayer I know that cannot be answered, but one I recite anyway, silently, every time I hold the camera.
Ryan Frigillana (born Iligan City, Philippines, he/him) is a Long Island-based visual artist working with photography and bookmaking. Drawing from collective memory and a heavy religious upbringing, his work explores the shared nuances of faith, grief, and home in the Filipinx diaspora primarily viewed through the lens of family.
He is the author of two monographs: Visions of Eden (self-published, 2020) and The Weight of Slumber (Penumbra Foundation, 2021). He has held both the Risograph Print & Publication Residency (2021) and the Workspace Program Residency (2024) at Penumbra Foundation. He has been awarded the NYFA / JGS Fellowship for Photography (2021), the En Foco Photography Fellowship (2023), and the Aperture & Google Creator Labs Photo Fund (2023).
En Foco, Inc. is a non-profit that supports U.S. based photographers of African, Asian, Latino, Native American, and Pacific Islander heritage. Founded in 1974, En Foco makes their work visible to the art world, yet remains accessible to under-served communities. Through exhibitions, workshops, events, and publications, it provides professional recognition, honoraria, and assistance to photographers as they grow into different stages of their careers.