Living Here

Eliza O. Barrios
Make Do: part one, 2022
Acrylic prints
Courtesy of the artist

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

“My childhood home symbolized the legacy of my family’s success having immigrated from the Philippines in 1963,” writes Eliza O. Barrios. In Make Do: part one, she photographs the domestic space as it looked after her mother passed away. The altered objects that embarrassed her as a child are now documented by her adult self. Her mother “repurposed broken fixtures to prop up photos, or support shelving that did not quite fit in a corner,” the artist recalls. “Her fervent need to be creative was evident throughout the house. She had an uncanny ability to see beyond the intended use of an object and resurrect it elsewhere, extending its life. From a make-shift ‘basket’ to a foot-rest using medicine bottle caps and curtain rods, she created contraptions to satisfy her exact needs. The objects range from decorative to functional, all metaphors of how she took control of and managed her experience transitioning to the States.”

This method of taking control by deliberately changing things is reflected in Barrios’ own art practice, where societal norms are often refashioned to suggest perspectives that come closer to the world the artist wants to see. As part of the Filipina American collective M.O.B., for example, the term “mail order brides” is reworked, which creates satire and disruption—a “mob”—while M.O.B.’s Manananggoogle performance project reshapes a traditional Filipino vampire-like quality, the manananggal, into an expression of feminist anti-capitalist satire when manananggal join the executive class.