Jeanne F. Jalandoni & Massiel Mafes

Crosscurrents is a duo exhibition featuring two New York City-based artists whose blended textile paintings revisit family archives and oral histories to tell their personal stories as second-generation Americans of Cuban and Filipino descent. Drawing from their distinct cultures, Massiel Mafes and Jeanne F. Jalandoni see textiles as a natural extension of painting and a method for layering lived experiences with second-hand memories passed down from their ancestors.

‘Crosscurrents’ can also be defined as a tendency to move counter to the usual trend, to pave a new path forward even if one is met with adversity or obstacles of every kind. Mafes and Jalandoni encounter new streams of thinking and rhythms of belonging as they flow together to create alternative modes of storytelling through stitching or staining these opposite mediums.

Born in Miami Florida, Massiel Mafes repurposes her family's second-hand clothing into textile paintings as a metaphor to physically connect with her Cuban heritage and reflect on her dual identity. Drawing inspiration from Latin American literature, her family's oral storytelling, and the lack of a physical archive, she explores themes of belonging and connection through painting and collage. Combining reality with fantasy, she meticulously hand-stitches pieces of discarded clothing to create portraits, landscapes, and seascapes. Her work merges Cuba, Miami, and her current home in New York to form blended self-portraits.

Jeanne F. Jalandoni, born and based in New York City, is a painter and textile artist who combines weaving and machine-knitting with oil painting to navigate the multifaceted experiences of her Filipino American identity. She draws inspiration from her family archives and childhood memories while also researching the historical relationship between the United States and the Philippines. The artist incorporates Filipino national symbols such as the carabao (water buffalo), bangus (milkfish), and mangoes into her painted fabric works to decipher biculturalism, bring attention to domestic and female labour, and challenge Western stereotypes of Filipino American identity.

While merging memory, myth, and the imaginary, both artists invite us to reflect on the multiple places and people that make up our inner and outer worlds. With paintbrush and thread, Mafes and Jalandoni find their way through the dreams of their ancestors and stories spoken around the kitchen table to shape personal narratives of their making. The intermixing of textile and painting processes speaks to the fluidity of memories—recollections whose fibers may be fixed in place for ancestors, but can always be reinterpreted and transformed by those listening. While these hybrid materials lead to new forms of knowledge-keeping, Mafes and Jalandoni discover ripples of colours that are reflective of their individual growth and rootedness to the landscapes they hold dear. Even though we may be looking at different oceans than generations before us, there is still a horizon line that connects us to their legacies. Crosscurrents can be seen as a meeting place for living histories to coexist together and an invitation to walk hand in hand with the keepsakes we wish to keep sacred.