Project Type: Wofford

Pattern Recognition

2020
mural
acrylic on panel
Asian Art Museum
Lawrence and Gorretti Lui Hyde Street Art Wall

Museum text:
Pattern Recognition
ā€™s speech bubbles shout out the names of local Asian American artists as a playful way to reconcile historical omissions. Comic-book speech bubbles exclaim RUTH ASAWA! BERNICE BING! CARLOS VILLA! and the names of six other artists who lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area. These familiar cartoon graphics give voice to Woffordā€™s mural, which embeds recognizable Asian decorative patterns within a festive 1980s design vocabulary to celebrate Asian American immigrant histories and cultures.

For the patterned background, Wofford chose motifs found in works in the museum collection as well as traditional designs drawn from Asian cultures represented in the surrounding communities. By showcasing the cultures of local immigrant communities and home-grown artists with friendly graphics and familiar patterns, Wofford, a San Franciscoā€“based Filipina American artist and educator, aims to welcome the museumā€™s neighbors, to let them know that this is a place where they belong.

Klub Rupturre!!

Klub Rupturre!!
installation, video, performance
video TRT 45 min 19 sec
Black & White Projects gallery
2019

Taking the form of a 1989 regional TV Dance Party, Klub Rupturre!! was a multimedia installation that incorporates painting, performance, video, installation, with an a late 80s palette and soundtrack. In the video, a creepy hostess introduces each song as dancers work their way through a top ten countdown leading up to the moment of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The installation was the set for the video as well as the venue for public events, including a live dance party.

2 minute edit of the 45 minute video here.

This project took place during the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that profoundly reshaped much of the culture of the Bay Area, in a year of great significance globally.

Klub Rupturre!! was funded by an SFAC Individual Artist Commission Grant.

Galleon Trade

2006-08
exchange project

A series of grass-roots arts exchange projects in Metro Manila and the Bay Area, focused on the Philippines, Mexico, and California. Taking the historic Acapulco-Manila galleon route as its metaphor of origin, these exhibitions, panels, performances and events sought to create new routes of cultural exchange along old routes of commerce and trade.

Manila Envelope, 2006
Worth Ryder Gallery, UC Berkeley
Galleon Trade: Manila, 2007
Mag:net Bonifacio, Mag:net Katipunan, Green Papaya Art Projects
Galleon Trade: Bay Area Now 5 Edition, 2008
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

Summer Furs

music video
2016

Woffles and Herb in a trashy no-budget video for their disco song about the sorrows of San Francisco summer weather. Originally written and performed for the 2015 Glamorgeddon exhibition and events at SOMArts curated by Johanna Poethig.
Video here.