Maria Dumlao

Maria Dumlao (b. 1972, Manila, Philippines) is an artist and educator based in Pennsylvania. She has exhibited, screened, and performed her work at venues across the United States, including Art in General, New York; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Momenta Art Gallery, New York, and The Contemporary Museum in Hawai’i. She received her MA in Studio Art from Hunter College-CUNY and a BA in Studio Art and Art History from Rutgers University. @madumlao

Maria Dumlao’s series, History in RGB: Tropical (2018), explores individual and collective history as viewed through multiple lenses. Using images of history, popular culture, mythic folklore, landscapes, and creatures, she proposes alternatives to the systemic representations ordered by colonial narratives. Each print juxtaposes images that have been stripped of color then re-assigned with the value of a specific hue based on a “tropical” Pantone palette.

In Native children, Thomasites, Mayon Volcano, and Kapre (RG) (2018), she comments on the colonial practice of exercising control through education reform policies and the violent long-lasting effects of colonization in the Philippines.