Sometimes My Accent Slips Out by Bhen Alan
Mentor: Jade Yumang
With curatorial guidance from Jon Santos
April 4 – May 18, 2024
Cue Art Foundation, Wed–Sat, 12–6 pm
Sometimes My Accent Slips Out is a solo exhibition by Providence-based artist Bhen Alan with mentorship from Jade Yumang. The exhibition builds upon the artist’s ongoing investigation of the banig, an indigenous form of mat weaving in the Philippines that, for the artist, serves as a memory bank in the face of personal upheaval, new territories, and shifting cultural landscapes.
Sometimes My Accent Slips Out parallels the practice of mat weaving with the sociolinguistic impact of migration and personal transformation. Alan reflects upon his own ancestry, contemplating the significance of the banig to everyday life, spirituality, and culture in the Philippines. These mats—which are used for sleeping, eating, gathering, rest, and ritual—serve as extensions of the individual self and collective heritage, as objects that mediate birth and death, celebration and mourning. They serve as a material legacy of resilience and community, with their forms and techniques passed down from weaver to weaver despite centuries of colonization, globalization, and foreign imposition.
“Banig weaving does not start at the first fold of a reed over another, but with seeds that are planted and tended to until harvest […] the banig is entwined in a natural cycle of living and dying that is essential to human and nonhuman survival, a stark contrast to the ‘destroy, extract, exploit’ approach to the land’s resources in much of the West,” writes catalogue essayist Sasha Cordingley. “Taken altogether, banig is not just object, but a stand-in for a Filipino identity, which has firmly resisted the steamrolling of culture, memory, and tradition by colonial enterprises.”
About the Artist
Bhen Alan (b. 1993, Cagayan Valley, Philippines) is a visual artist, dancer, and educator who grew up weaving and learning traditional folk dances. He immigrated to Toronto, Canada, when he was 17 years old, before settling in the United States. He received U.S. citizenship in 2019. Alan’s work draws from his upbringing and diasporic experiences to incorporate multiple disciplines and mediums that reflect both his cultural heritage and recent contemporary investigations.
Alan holds an MFA in Painting and a Certificate in Collegiate Teaching in Art and Design from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a BFA in Painting from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. From 2022-23, he received a Fulbright scholarship to conduct artistic research in the Philippines, working alongside master weavers of indigenous tribes to research mat weaving culture.
More exhibition information can be found here.
Image: Installation view of Sometimes My Accent Slips Out by Bhen Alan, 2024. Photo by Leo Ng.
