Souvenir: Entangled Objects is an archival research project examining early twentieth-century photographic postcards from the American occupation of the Philippines. Developed during my Alan Jutzi Fellowship at The Huntington, the research considers the postcard not simply as an image, but as a material object embedded within systems of empire, circulation, labor, extraction, and memory.
The project focuses on “real photo” postcards sent home by American servicemen. These images depicted Filipino landscapes, Indigenous communities, rural labor, war, and the aftermath of destruction, yet they were primarily produced for American audiences. In circulation, they helped construct an image of a “benevolent” imperial presence, transforming the realities of occupation into picturesque and consumable souvenirs.
I became interested in the contradictions embedded within these objects. A souvenir is traditionally an object of remembrance—something carried across distance to preserve a memory of a person or place. But what happens when pasalubong, a gesture of remembrance, takes the form of a postcard depicting genocide, destruction, displacement, or child labor in export fields? What does it mean to bring home an image of violence as a keepsake?
Rather than sentimental objects, these postcards became material evidence of war, ecological destruction, economic restructuring, and the commodification of land and labor. Their images flatten people, landscapes, and histories into consumable objects of empire. From the bombed-out remains of Manila to roads cut through resource-rich mountains, the archive reveals land as a site of both domination and resistance.
Through this research, I began to see the postcard as more than a representation of colonial life. Its physical movement—from the Philippines to the United States—mirrored larger systems of imperial circulation. The postcard carried an image across an ocean while the networks of empire carried people, resources, labor, information, and capital in the opposite direction. The object itself became a way of tracing these relationships.
This led me to a larger question: what infrastructures allow empire to move?
The research for Souvenir: Entangled Objects became the conceptual foundation for Perlas ng Digma, a visual arts project connecting my two island homelands, the Philippines and Ireland. As I began a residency in Ireland, I became interested in tracing the cables—both literal and historical—that connect these places.
From the Transatlantic Cable Station in western Ireland to the telegraph lines established in the Philippines under U.S. occupation, these communication networks were part of a larger imperial infrastructure that enabled the movement of information, goods, people, and capital. Today, those networks have evolved into the undersea cables, data centers, and telecommunications systems that connect the Philippines to global economies, including the U.S.-driven Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry.
Perlas ng Digma extends the questions first raised through the postcard archive: How do systems of empire persist after formal colonial rule? How are histories of extraction embedded within contemporary infrastructures? And how do objects and networks continue to shape what—and who—is made visible, valuable, or disposable?
The postcard became my entry point into these questions: a small souvenir that revealed a much larger system. By following its routes across oceans, I began to trace the infrastructures beneath the images—the cables, roads, landscapes, labor, and networks that connect histories of occupation to the present.
We all shape the future archive. What we choose to preserve—or challenge—will determine the histories others inherit.
All archival objects pictured here are courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
The project focuses on “real photo” postcards sent home by American servicemen. These images depicted Filipino landscapes, Indigenous communities, rural labor, war, and the aftermath of destruction, yet they were primarily produced for American audiences. In circulation, they helped construct an image of a “benevolent” imperial presence, transforming the realities of occupation into picturesque and consumable souvenirs.
I became interested in the contradictions embedded within these objects. A souvenir is traditionally an object of remembrance—something carried across distance to preserve a memory of a person or place. But what happens when pasalubong, a gesture of remembrance, takes the form of a postcard depicting genocide, destruction, displacement, or child labor in export fields? What does it mean to bring home an image of violence as a keepsake?
Rather than sentimental objects, these postcards became material evidence of war, ecological destruction, economic restructuring, and the commodification of land and labor. Their images flatten people, landscapes, and histories into consumable objects of empire. From the bombed-out remains of Manila to roads cut through resource-rich mountains, the archive reveals land as a site of both domination and resistance.
Through this research, I began to see the postcard as more than a representation of colonial life. Its physical movement—from the Philippines to the United States—mirrored larger systems of imperial circulation. The postcard carried an image across an ocean while the networks of empire carried people, resources, labor, information, and capital in the opposite direction. The object itself became a way of tracing these relationships.
This led me to a larger question: what infrastructures allow empire to move?
The research for Souvenir: Entangled Objects became the conceptual foundation for Perlas ng Digma, a visual arts project connecting my two island homelands, the Philippines and Ireland. As I began a residency in Ireland, I became interested in tracing the cables—both literal and historical—that connect these places.
From the Transatlantic Cable Station in western Ireland to the telegraph lines established in the Philippines under U.S. occupation, these communication networks were part of a larger imperial infrastructure that enabled the movement of information, goods, people, and capital. Today, those networks have evolved into the undersea cables, data centers, and telecommunications systems that connect the Philippines to global economies, including the U.S.-driven Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry.
Perlas ng Digma extends the questions first raised through the postcard archive: How do systems of empire persist after formal colonial rule? How are histories of extraction embedded within contemporary infrastructures? And how do objects and networks continue to shape what—and who—is made visible, valuable, or disposable?
The postcard became my entry point into these questions: a small souvenir that revealed a much larger system. By following its routes across oceans, I began to trace the infrastructures beneath the images—the cables, roads, landscapes, labor, and networks that connect histories of occupation to the present.
We all shape the future archive. What we choose to preserve—or challenge—will determine the histories others inherit.
All archival objects pictured here are courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
