Artist Sarah Melby

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At the moment, it’s really easy to feel helpless in the midst of multiple worldwide crises and reckonings, but it’s important for each of us to resist that helplessness and embrace the uncomfortable nature of getting the work done however we can.

I believe as artists, we have an obligation to visually advocate for the marginalized stories in our communities and actively seek to promote the voices of people who are doing work we cannot. The voices of Filipino nurses in the US have long been talked over or pushed aside despite their value and undeniable contributions they’ve made in caring for communities across the country.

There is a particular resilience I keep coming back to that exists in the Filipino culture and community that not only means taking on hard things, but doing so with an incredible joy and kindness. My aim was to capture that sense of joy among the Filipino medical community as well as the extremely difficult context in which each of them are working.