Carlo Maghirang: Anito
August 23–September 5, 2025
Los Angeles State Historic Park
245 N Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Public art installation at the River Station Roundhouse turntable
Free park entrance; general parking $2 per hour or $8 per day, seniors $7 flat, ADA parking $4 flat (or free with disabled person placard).
Know Before You Go and Accessibility Map
Public Programs at L.A. State Historic Park
Sunday, August 24, 2025, 1–3 PM
Saturday, August 30, 2025, 1–3 PM
“‘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 the LA State Historic Park, on view during August 23–September 5, 2025.
Carlo Maghirang’s Anito lies between the intersection of contemporary Queer self-portraiture and Anitism–the precolonial faith system of the Tagalogs. In a series of mixed-media carvings rendered as taotao idols, Maghirang places his own body into the context of ancient Filipino depictions of the male form. What is the expression of the body from the perspective of ancestors, unencumbered by the Western ideals of masculinity? Anito weaves a narrative that connects queer physicality to memory and faith: an exquisite corpse of ancestry and gender expression.
Inspired by the artist’s memory of childhood interactions with the shamans and their use of such idols in his village in Laguna– introduced to him by his grandfather–the work is also a personal excavation of Maghirang’s male lineage. Anito is a continuation of a series that remaps his connections to his country by linking memories to spirituality and myth. It follows Maghirang’s previous work MA-NA-NANG-GAL (2024) an ode to the women of his line.
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.
The sculptures will be activated by a series of community programs on Sunday, August 24, 2025, and Saturday, August 30, 2025.
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.
Photographs by Lawrence Sumulong for the Lincoln Center/Vogue PH.
Support
Support for Anito is provided by Karen Hillenburg.
