Makibaka

The Queens Museum presents Abang-guard: Makibaka (March 16, 2025 – October 5, 2025), the artist duo and
2024-2025 QM–Jerome Foundation Fellows’ first museum solo exhibition. Makibaka reconfigures the iconic architecture of the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair’s Philippines and New York State Pavilions as a scaffold to structure their investigation into the layered significance of the year 1965 in Filipino American labor history.

Artist duo Abang-guard – Maureen Catbagan + Jevijoe Vitug – contends with Filipino visibility through the lens of immigration and labor. Through performance, painting, and sculpture, Abang-guard illuminates overlooked Filipino American histories that are inextricable from the fabric of America. The artists restage these narratives through the iconography of the Philippines and New York State Pavilions of the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair.

Abang-guard utilizes the year 1965 as a critical nexus. That year, Filipino farm workers started the Delano Grape Strike in California, kicking off an unprecedented collaboration between Filipino and Mexican laborers that formed the United Farm Workers Union. Additionally, the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act transformed Filipino occupational migration from farming to nursing. Integral to America’s progress, these extractive labor economies are rooted in the U.S. colonization of the Philippines from 1898–1946. Abang-guard memorializes these histories in multimedia installations by retooling landmark architecture and American Pop art from the World’s Fair.

Makibaka, roughly translated from Tagalog as “coming together for change,” is a rallying cry used by Filipino movements against exploitative systems and is woven into Abang-guard’s practice. Through this exhibition, the artists take stock of how Filipino American labor migration history has been lived, remembered, erased, and fought for.

Abang-guard will activate their exhibition through a series of public programs and performances. On opening day, the artists will do an unveiling ribbon-cutting performance as well as a performative lecture. On May 18th, during Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage month, the Museum will host a screening of Nurse unseen (2024), a documentary directed by Michelle Josue about the Filipino Nurses in Queens and beyond who were at the vanguard of COVID-19 efforts. On June 22nd, the artists will hold a performance and family art-making workshop about the history of the salakot, a hat traditionally used by Filipino farmers. To celebrate Filipino Heritage Month and delve further into preservation of cultural and communal histories, Abang-guard will be in conversation with representatives from the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) Museum, FANHS-Stockton, and Little Manila Rising on October 2nd.