In this exhibition, the concept of the shadow symbolises the lingering spectres of colonial history that follow the Filipino diaspora—Australia’s fifth-largest migrant community. Artists Celline Mercado, Jermaine Ibarra, Justyne Allen, and Lance Zuniga engage with familiar symbols of domesticity and architecture—the bed, the window, the TV—to explore Filipino identity, cultural visibility, and ancestral legacy. Blending Indigenous Filipino, Western, and hybrid iconographies, their works reflect on a complex past, reclaiming these shadows as part of an evolving decolonial consciousness.

Globally, Filipinos form one of the most widespread diasporas. Within the dislocated space of migration, these artists both reinvent and reflect, acknowledging that Filipino identity remains deeply shaped by the Philippines’ violent history of Spanish and American colonisation, and the political upheavals of the Marcos regime—events that catalysed mass migration and global dispersal. The exhibition’s title is drawn from a bugtong, a Filipino riddle, with the answer being anino—shadow. These shadows of colonial history and injustice linger across time and place, ghost-like. But to hold the hand of your ghost is to face it, befriend it, play with it.

The works in this show draw from material histories and soft power, converging in forms that evoke the domestic. Celline and Justyne use furniture—beds, televisions—to question Western aesthetics and the in/visibility of Filipinos in mainstream media. Jermaine and Lance use paintings and garments to complicate the notion of a unified Filipino identity. Together, their installations construct makeshift dwellings and intimate spaces that gesture toward movement, memory, and a decolonial re/search of self.