My first solo exhibition at the Manilatown Heritage Foundation in the spring of 2011, served as a catalyst for me to look into the life of my Filipino father, a man whose story remained largely elusive to me.

In the 1920s, my father traveled from the Visayas Region of the Philippines to San Francisco's Manilatown. He became a founding member of the Caballeros de Dimas Alang, a Filipino fraternal organization that started its first U.S. chapter in the heart of San Francisco. This group paid homage to Jose Rizal, the Philippine national hero, adopting his pen name, Dimas-Alang, which he used while writing revolutionary tracts.

Exhibiting my work at the Manilatown Heritage Foundation held a profound significance for me. Growing up blocks away in the Ping Yuen Housing Complex, I became intimately acquainted with the pulse of this community. At the age of 13, a profound sense of despair washed over me as I witnessed our elders being forcibly and violently evicted from the I-Hotel, only to watch the vacant lot remain untouched for a quarter of a century.