Jeanne F. Jalandoni
Dinner with Lola and Lolo in Seattle, 2019
Oil on canvas stitched to food wrappers, felt, knit fabric, leather, cotton, stuffing, printed fabric
Courtesy the artist

This work is on loan for the exhibition, Living Here, at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, June 20 - December 20, 2025

In Dinner with Lola and Lolo in Seattle, Jalandoni highlights the cultural and personal histories that enrich the Filipino diaspora. It reproduces a photograph—taken by Jeanne F. Jalandoni's father, Anthony Jalandoni—of her New York-based family visiting interstate relatives.
The artwork also reacts to the Boxer Codex, produced anonymously in Manila during the late 1700s, which describes the people and customs of several different Asian countries and includes fifteen pictures of people from the Philippines in traditional costumes. Jalandoni responds by foregrounding her existence as an individual person, not a costumed stereotype. The Asian flora and fauna of the Codex are translated into objects familiar to the artist such as shrimp chip bags and a wooden horse from her childhood. She notes that her father’s photograph was once used in an American nonfiction book titled Filipinos that, like the Codex, was created to explain Filipinos to a non-Filipino audience.