Home is a Memory

“What They Left Us” feels like a personal glimpse into the life of a friend you’ve come to find home in. I arrived at The Alchemy of Art gallery in Fells Point, surprised to see that the building looked like a mix between a church and an apartment. As I walked down the hallway, before I saw anyone, I could hear the happy and excited exchanges of welcome between friends, families, and some of the artists. Curated by Ciarra K. Walters and Anna Divinagracia, the exhibit features eight Filipino artists whose works explore themes of memory, migration, inheritance, and community. The show is enclosed within two rooms, one black box room at the entrance and the other an elongated room divided by a slight staircase around the corner.

The deeper I went inside, the more the space transformed from just a gallery to feeling like I was in someone’s home. That sense of warmth and intimacy made the themes and opening celebration of the show feel even more gratifying. The journey through the place led to a resting couch area, a store entrance, a kitchen area with Filipino foods and drinks, and a large, serene courtyard with tables, chairs, lights, and ivy-decorated walls. I loved everything about “What They Left Us” I was seeing. It not only honored the past in unique ways, but synchronicities were everywhere amongst the artists’ work forms and stories. Curious about how these eight Filipino artists came together, I asked someone nearby for more information — and luckily, it ended up being one of the co-curators of the show.

Walters, a multidisciplinary artist, told me that during the planning meetings with all the artists, the more they discussed their works together, the more they realized that each piece incorporated photography in some way.

Walters’ piece, “Untitled (A Remembrance)”, is a 19×19-inch mixed media sculpture impressive for its photo transferred onto Capiz shells, arranged in a 5×7 grid of translucent squares, which are connected by white thread and entirely suspended by oak wood. The photograph features a scene from 1996 that her grandmother, Lola, took of a Banca boat — a traditional Filipino outrigger canoe — on a trip back to the Philippines from America. This image of six people on a boat tells a story of migration, but also of beginnings.

“It all started with a boat. Before planes [and trains], it was boats.” Walters said. “The photo felt right because the capiz shells come from oysters and [the] majority of migration stories start with a boat.” 

Wholeheartedly agreeing, this made me wonder how she created her piece. She told me she was originally trying to make a window, but it turned out to require much more effort than she expected. Then, she informed me that her mother passed away in 2021 and that a year later, she took a trip to Paris to perform in front of Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s installation, “L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped.”

“On my last day I went to visit an old church [that] I felt my mom would have wanted to see if she was alive. On my way there, as I walked, I went through a plant district and heard the capiz shell windchime and thought, ‘That sounds like my mother.’ I bought it and took it back with me to Maryland. I hung it outside of my window as a reminder of my mother, Eileen,” Walters shared with me.

Walters wouldn’t let anybody touch the piece due to its fragility, but she let me hear the wind chime-like sound it makes by running her hands gently across the capiz shells. Its beautiful clanging, reminiscent of her mother’s presence, reminded me of a memory at my grandmother’s house, of walking through a doorway full of beads that rattled. The lingering sound of the glass ringing along with the swaying of the shells reinforces this concept of movement, reflecting migration through the glistening waves of the sea.

Describing her experience as a “full circle moment,” Walters shared that when speaking to another Filipino artist about what happened to her in Paris, she learned from them that capiz shells are from the Philippines, inspiring the creation of her work in 2025. “I decided to put a piece of the image on each shell as a way to face our fragile memory and how we tend to remember it in parts.”

It was so inspiring to hear how this window idea transformed into a mirror-like portal of family, place, and legacy.  Her use of white thread, also present in her collaged work, “A Thread of Daughters” (2023), mirrors the fragility of memory, capturing how we can reckon with the pieces we have left. 

Walters also gave me some insight into some of the works of other artists’ who weren’t at the opening. She told me about Ryan Frigillana, whose archival photographs “Pamana” and “The Home They Built” (2022) both display a family portrait of a man and woman holding hands in front of a building with multiple sack bags behind them. Rice — which scattered grains of are depicted lying across a scrapbook page in a binder in “Pamana” — played a huge role in supporting Frigillana’s family and education. “The Home They Built” showcases a house of red-patterned playing cards stacked into a pyramid atop of a red-and-white checkered tablecloth. What makes this piece clever is that one of the base cards has been replaced by the family photograph, speaking to how ancestral labor and presence were foundational in the artist’s present-day success. It echoes not only legacy, but the quiet balancing act of care and memory.

I also got a chance to talk with Divinagracia or Divina, the other co-curator of the show. She introduced me to some of the available food options, including all Filipino dishes catered by Mama Rosa Grill. 

It wasn’t until later that I learned she also had artwork in the show. Unlike the other artists in the exhibit, Divina’s experience was unique because she was a direct immigrant from the Philippines. After years of traveling and living back and forth between the U.S. and the Philippines, she finally acquired her green card to remain here, but now feels uncertain about staying. She thought she was not alone in thinking as others in the kitchen discussed the Trump administration’s outrageous and indiscriminate behavior towards undocumented immigrants and foreign countries. A 2020 Morgan State University graduate, this is Divina’s second show at The Art of Alchemy. Divina said she loved working with Walters and “learned a lot about herself and her art practice.”

Her works, “Lola’s House on Sundays” and “The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side,” contemplate similar themes of family and home but express different sentiments about liberation, opportunity, and dichotomies of place and identity. Walking me through her works more, she shared details behind her photograph, “Lola’s House on Sundays,” which shows how her grandma loved to play chess with her kids every Sunday after church and “siesta,” a tradition of a period of the day where you take a nap. An inviting and warm scene of a living room area with an open curtain window view, two floral chairs, and a chessboard on a table.

Divina honors her legacy by paying homage to the traditions she has learned and bravely interrogating her innermost dialogue through her work, considering “Where home can be?” and “Where can I find liberation?” Divina definitely left me pondering these same deep thoughts.

Explaining the elements of her work, “The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side,” Divina said that “home is a memory” and that she has “built home in people” since living in the U.S. 

Using wire as a recurring motif in her work, she demonstrates how being an immigrant pursuing the “American dream” feels like being “trapped” and kept out of feeling at home. Home is and has always been complex, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t easy to capture. This exhibit does it remarkably well, and despite each piece being connected through theme and photography, it masterfully expresses many emotions, feelings, and experiences that come up when we think of family or home. Words like haunting, distant, sustaining, fragmented, layered, sacred. I didn’t want to leave because I already felt at home.  

“What They Left Us” has multiple programs in store between July 19 and August 2, ending with the closing reception and artist talk. Exhibitions at The Alchemy of Art rotate monthly, so unless you buy one of the works, this is the only time you’ll see these works in this setting.