The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) in collaboration with the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) is pleased to announce Sowing Seeds: Filipino American Stories from the Pajaro Valley, an exhibition that shines a light on the vibrant Filipino American life on the Central Coast. The show is on view at the MAH from April 12–August 4, 2024.
Four years in the making, the exhibition tells the story of Filipino migration and labor in Watsonville and the greater Pajaro Valley of Central California from the 1930s to the present.
The exhibition is the result of a prestigious $75,000 Public Humanities Projects: Exhibitions Planning grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to Watsonville is in the Heart ((WIITH). Housed in The Humanities Institute at UCSC, WIITH is a community-driven public history initiative dedicated to preserving and uplifting the stories of Filipino migration and labor in the city of Watsonville and the greater Pajaro Valley.
“We had a shared vision with our community partners from the beginning of our work together that has only kept our efforts focused,” said Kathleen “Kat” Cruz Gutierrez, assistant professor of history at UCSC and co-principal investigator of WIITH, “An exhibition has been part of that vision, and we’re eager to share perspectives on Filipino American agrarian life that come straight from those who lived, worked, struggled, and flourished in the Pajaro Valley.”
Part of the exhibition focuses on oral histories and family heirlooms associated with WIITH. In total the exhibition will feature 52 family objects and 13 oral histories drawn from 18 family collections including agricultural tools, family photographs, organizational paperwork, and photo albums.
Sowing Seeds features installation, photography, illustration, and film. WIITH invited eight artists engaged in a range of artistic disciplines and mediums to participate in the exhibition, all of whom have worked with or around the importance of archives, memory, and community.
Johanna Poethig and Minerva Amistoso will present works of art about the experiences of the elderly manong and manang generation. Ruth Tabancay, an artist who grew up in the Pajaro Valley, is creating a new work of art especially for the exhibition, highlighting the experiences of young Filipinas and performing femininity. Binh Danh, Sandra Lucille, Jenifer Wofford, Ant Lorenzo, and Connie Zheng have been invited to work directly with community members to produce works of art that investigates their collections and family histories.
The WIITH team has previously worked closely with the Pajaro Valley’s Filipino American community to build a digital archive, said Christina Ayson Plank, PhD candidate in Visual Studies at UCSC and head curator of Watsonville is in the Heart. “We’ve gone to their homes and heard stories about their parents, family friends, and relatives that are memorialized through the objects they’ve kept and preserved,” Ayson-Plank said.
ABOUT WATSONVILLE IS IN THE HEART
Watsonville is in the Heart is a community archive and research initiative at UCSC that seeks to preserve the history of the manong of the Pajaro Valley. Since 2021, a team of interviewers and digital archivists has conducted 44 oral history interviews with 44 narrators and accessioned 1,140 cultural objects, images and documents to create the first digital archive that chronicles the community.
ABOUT THE MAH
The MAH is a thriving community gathering place that offers rotating art and history exhibitions, visual and performing artworks, public festivals, education and outreach programs, and cultural celebrations in collaboration with its many partners. It maintains a permanent collection of regionally significant art and artifacts, a research library, a historical archive, and historic sites including the Evergreen Cemetery, Octagon Building, and Davenport Jail. It is also home to Abbott Square, a vibrant public plaza on the museum’s doorstep that offers food, social events, and year-round creative happenings.
