Carlo Maghirang: ANITO
August 23–September 7, 2025
Los Angeles State Historic Park
1245 N Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Public art installation at the River Station Roundhouse turntable
Digital Brochure | PRESS
Public Programs at L.A. State Historic Park
Saturday, August 23, 1PM, performance by Jobel Medina
Saturday, August 30, 5PM, performance by Anna Luisa Petrisko
“‘Tatay’ is what we called him. I never learned his name–too young to have learned it, but he was my first father in memory. We shared very few moments together, but many of them were shrouded in superstition, and a few dealt with something unexplainable. It may be that the first time I see his name is when I read it on his tombstone.”
LACE is proud to present Carlo Maghirang’s ANITO, a public art installation at LA State Historic Park, on view August 23–September 7, 2025.
Carlo Maghirang conducts a ritual of ancestral veneration through queer self-portraiture in his latest installation entitled ANITO. Each iteration in this sculptural landscape maps varying states of identity through the repetitive making of ‘taotao’ figurines, reimagined as a collection of modular forms that assemble into a lineage of past selves.
The second of Maghirang’s triptych of installations, ANITO follows MA-NA-NANG-GAL (2024), which explored themes on dissection and separation, and builds upon it through the reconstruction and subsequent reconciliation of identity.
Inspired by the same idol he encountered as a child during near-death experience with his grandfather, this collection of figures and the parts that comprise them tells a playful narrative on identity-creation. ANITO is a continuation of a series that remaps his connections to his country through the self, linking memories to spirituality and myth.
ANITO refers to the spirits of ancestors of the indigenous Tagalogs in the Philippines, and the practice of carving figures/idols (called either taotao or likha) to represent them. These idols vary in size and use: some are the size of one’s palms, often kept in makeshift altars and prayed on for health and riches, while others are human scale and used as wayfinding posts or to bless a particular crop/field. Their use has been well-documented since before the colonization of the islands by the Spanish, and are often made with the natural materials found within the creators’ immediate surroundings (such as wood, limestone, coral, and gold). They are imbued with the spirits of the creator’s ancestors through ritual and offerings.
About the Artist
Carlo Maghirang (he/they) is a Los Angeles-based installation artist, scenographer, and experimental space designer, originally from San Pedro, Laguna, Philippines. Specializing in spatial interventions that bridge the gap between art object and environment, his works are often explorations on Otherness: the context of a body into foreign or hostile worlds. Maghirang’s current works utilizes childhood writings alongside memories and folktales in order to reconnect lost cultural history with his present body.
Most recently, his solo sculptural installation, MA-NA-NANG-GAL debuted at the Lincoln Center, New York, for the Social Sculpture Project in March 2024, and was featured by Vogue Philippines.
Photograph by Lawrence Sumulong for the Lincoln Center/Vogue PH.
About the Performers
Anna Luisa Petrisko (she/her) is an artist, musician, and healer. Her work spans sound, performance, video, sculpture, and ritual. She investigates the body as a site of paradox – transcendent of time and space. With roots in community and collaboration, she builds spaces of cultural memory and spiritual connection. Her experimental opera All Time Stop Now premiered at REDCAT in 2023, a follow-up to her opera VIBRATION GROUP which premiered at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) in 2019. She has performed at LACMA, the Broad, and Lincoln Center, with support from MAP Fund, National Performance Network, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
Jobel Medina (b. 1990, Pasig City, Philippines) is a Filipino-American dancer and choreographer based in Los Angeles. His work spans the United States and France, and he has collaborated with renowned artists such as Tino Sehgal, Benjamin Millepied, Dimitri Chamblas, Alex Prager, Kim Gordon, Simon McBurney, Shahar Binyamini, Danielle Agami, and Tom Weinberger. Medina’s choreography has been presented at leading institutions including The Broad Museum (Los Angeles), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), the Musée d’Orsay (Paris), and the Institute of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles). He holds a Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts and has taught at various universities across the United States.
Support
Support for this program is provided by Karen Hillenburg, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, California Arts Council, and the National Performance Network
Special thanks to our friends at White Rabbit Truck for offering Filipino fusion bites during ANITO’s activations.
