Melissa Chimera

This portrait of Chimera’s grandmother, Andrea Cubero, combines an oil painting overlaid with an image on silk reproduced from Andrea’s citizenship document when she became a naturalized citizen of Hawai‘i —then an American Territory—after relocating from the Philippines. Andrea, her brother, and her mother united with her father on Maui in 1932. The “Race or Color” text running alongside the figure is derived from a 1940 census document produced by the Department of Commerce Bureau of the United States for Spreckelsville, Maui, where Andrea self-identified as Filipino in the Race or Color field, and under citizenship status, was described as “alien.” She would not receive citizenship until 1949, seventeen years after her arrival.

The Philippines were U.S. allies during World War II, making immigrants from the Philippines eligible for American citizenship in the years following the 1946 passage of the Luce-Celler bill granting naturalization access to thousands of Filipina/o migrants. The leafy greens of a moringa tree, better known in Hawai‘i as kalamungay, are often used in Philippine cuisine and were a common ingredient in the specialty dishes Andrea prepared for Chimera during the artist’s childhood. In this portrait, a kalamungay leaf pattern creates a backdrop for the sole figure and personalizes the context of an individual who is otherwise recalled through government records.