Abang-Guard Talk Labor, Legacy and “Makibaka” at the Queens Museum

October was Filipino American History Month, and to mark the occasion the Queens Museum extended its popular exhibition dedicated to the work of the Filipino artist duo Abang-guard, also known as Maureen Catbagan (b. Quezon City, Philippines, 1975) and Jevijoe Vitug (b. Pampanga, Philippines, 1977), who both work as guards at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and have collaborated since 2017. “Abang-guard: Makibaka” takes its title from a Tagalog word for “coming together for change,” and this strongly political show uses performance, painting and sculpture to explore the winds of change through the lens of Filipino history and that of the Queens Museum. We caught up with Catbagan and Vitug to hear more about the exhibition, which is now open until January 18.

You both met as guards at the Met in 2017. How does that origin shape the way you create and present work?

We are both Filipinos, and our collaborative name Abang-guard is simultaneously a play on avant-garde and the Tagalog word “abang,” which translates as waiting or watchful. The physical act of standing guard automatically assigns importance and value to whatever is behind it, be it a priceless object, VIP, or monument. The sites we’ve performed at have included a sari-sari (small grocery) store, a shuttered community center, the Rizal Social Club (now an empty lot) and art venues ranging from our Abang-guard Street Museum, giving the general public the chance to create and show art, to major museums worldwide. Out of typical context, standing guard can seem humorous and absurd. We want the performance to lead to a deeper examination of what is valued in our day-to-day lives and communities and what is overlooked, erased and considered disposable.

The Queens Museum exhibition coincides with the 60th anniversary of the World’s Fair. Why does 1965 function as such a critical nexus in your practice?

The 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair was the first time the Philippines and other non-Western countries were invited to participate. We took this cultural moment as the starting point for our exhibition and our research in the archives at the Queens Museum as well as fieldwork in California. Three pivotal moments in Filipino American history occurred in 1965, the same year as the World’s Fair: the 1965 Delano Grape Strike, which was one of the largest solidarity and labor movements between Mexican and Filipino farmworkers in the United States; the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act; and the launch of Medicaid and Medicare programs, which paved the way for the mass recruitment of around 25,000 Filipino nurses to fill acute domestic staffing shortages. Also, during the mid-60s, urban redevelopment plans divided immigrant neighborhoods, including the Crosstown Freeway in Stockton, California, leading to the erasure of the oldest Little Manila in the United States.

The replica pavilion filled with time capsules and care packages pays homage to the Delano Grape Strike. How do you see that strike’s legacy resonating with labor struggles today?

The strike lasted for almost five years and gained national momentum due to its persistence. It won farmworkers union contracts with better wages, healthcare benefits and protections from pesticides. These benefits, such as job protection and environmental safety, are currently being diminished. It’s important to highlight this history to show that there is a successful playbook for collective action and resistance.

Mexican activist leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta are most often referenced in historical accounts of the Delano Grape Strike, but here the names of 75 of the thousands of unsung Filipino organizers and strikers, including Larry Itliong, who initiated the walkout, are inscribed on the missile-shaped time capsules. They are placed in one of the exhibition’s main sculptures, resembling the roof of the Philippine Pavilion that’s shaped like a salakot, a traditional farmer’s hat. Each is filled with items from local shops in Little Manila, Queens, just like the care packages sent between the Filipino diaspora and their families.

Bridged Monuments places you on-site guarding Little Manila in Stockton and Delano. How does the act of “guarding” function as both performance and memorial?

One often sees sentinels in prestigious sites such as palaces and major historical monuments performing ritual formations like the changing of the guard. We incorporate these aesthetic cues that invoke national importance and reverence. Being physically present and standing guard at sites like Little Manila in Stockton and Delano is a way to honor our Manongs and Manangs (elder brothers and sisters) and to witness and hold the histories they lived—their struggles and their contributions. Going to these sites and performing this act is a way of remembering, protecting and keeping those memories alive, connecting the past to the present.

Environmental justice enters the exhibition with The Air We Breathe (For Dawn Mabalon). Why was it important to connect labor history with air quality and public health?

It’s mostly poor, working-class POC (people of color) neighborhoods that are chosen to be in proximity to urban highway projects and polluted ports. The city of Stockton has both. Many residents suffer long-term health effects due to exposure, and the city is one of the “asthma capitals” of the nation. Esteemed Filipina American academic and historian Dawn Mabalon, who grew up in Stockton, died of asthma at the age of 45. The artwork is titled in her honor, with monitors reflecting average monthly readings of air quality in the mostly immigrant neighborhoods of Flushing, Queens and Stockton, California.

Several works reimagine Pop art from the 1964-1965 World’s Fair. How do you use Warhol, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist and Lichtenstein to tell Filipino histories that were absent at the time?

The New York State Pavilion’s Theaterama commissioned and installed works by American Pop artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist, whose murals reflected advanced technology, capitalist consumerism and space exploration. Historical narratives about Filipino Americans and Filipinos were largely absent in the U.S. during the 1960s, so we reimagined the Pop artworks as portraits of Filipino experiences, focusing on labor and collective struggle.

Warhol’s 13 Most Wanted Men became America’s Most Help Wanted, replacing prison mugshots with portraits of Filipina nurses, turning criminality into care and essential labor. Rauschenberg’s collage idealizing images of American progress is recreated with archival photos of Filipino nurses with President Johnson signing the 1965 Immigration Act, linking policy to migration. Rosenquist’s mural, featuring American consumerism and nationalism, now focuses on the advertisements and promotions enticing Filipina nurses to the only path to a better life abroad, with the message “Your cap is your passport.” Lichtenstein’s comic book-style woman is reframed as a portrait of Philippine exchange student Corazon Amurao, the sole survivor of the 1966 mass murder of nurses-in-training in Chicago, restoring visibility to a silenced violent history.

Although drawn from these Pop artists’ works, the paintings retain a distinctive Filipino style with heavy, textured brushstrokes and subtle Indigenous patterns, asserting ancestral identity within the Pop vocabulary. These works also reflect the impact of the Immigration Act, which allowed Filipino nurses to migrate to the U.S. and later bring their families, leading to the growth of communities like Little Manila in Queens, New York.

October was Filipino American History Month. How do you want Makibaka to contribute to that wider reflection and dialogue?

Filipino history is one of immigrants arriving as laborers, facing exploitation, and continuing to fight for justice. With current DEI initiatives, they are also facing a villainizing of immigrants. Our exhibition provides an entry point to reflect on Filipino immigrants’ vital labor contributions to the farming and healthcare industries of the United States. More importantly, we want to honor how Filipinos built unity and kinship against oppressive systems, not only to care for one another but also to stand with other POC immigrant communities. Makibaka is at the heart of the show—a call for solidarity, courage and collective action, reminding us that the struggle for equity, recognition and historical truth continues.

More in Artists

• Rember Yahuarcani On Wielding Paint as a Tool of Cultural Preservation and Resistance

• The Art of Transmission: How Hiba Baddou Reimagines Moroccan Futurity

• Izumi Kato’s Hybrid Totemic Forms Trace Possible Paths of Ecological Survival

• How Artist Eamon Ore-Giron Is Keeping Ancient Deities Alive

• Nika Neelova On “UMBRA” and the Death of Linear Time