“Maleta Stories” illuminate the streets of Toronto at the Nuit Blanche public art event
Toronto, ON – Over 2,500 people gathered at Marissa Largo and the Magkaisa Centre’s groundbreaking “Maleta
[Suitcase] Stories” art exhibit for one ecstatic and sleepless night as Toronto’s annual Nuit Blanche public art event lit up the streets. As the first-ever Filipino Canadian community-based project featured in this internationally-renowned art event, “Maleta Stories” set over 2,500 migration stories alight from participants whose own histories unfolded into one collective web of migration. Hosted at the University of Toronto’s Centre for International Experience, the exhibit transformed Toronto into an enduring testament of the Filipino Canadian community’s struggle for genuine settlement and integration.
Maleta Stories tags hang outside Centre for International Experience to create a web of migration
This dynamic and interactive two-part exhibit brought to the fore the vital role played by transnational communities in propelling Toronto’s development as Canada’s economic engine. At the venue, thousands of visitors were invited to record their own “Maleta Story” of migration on baggage tags and hang them onto strings jutting out from the building, thus adding to a web that chronicled Canada’s economic development through the contributions of immigrants. Visitors drawn inside experienced the Filipino Canadian community’s history of struggle and resistance as depicted through various community-based art pieces. One participant stressed, “It is important that we all acknowledge the hardship of the Filipino Canadians as not enough people are aware of it.”
Reading maleta stories
As expressed by arts educator and PhD candidate Marissa Largo, the project’s leading artist, “Maleta Stories was intended to emotionally engage the public by reflecting on stories of migration, either their own or of others’. This speaks to the power of art to move people emotionally and it is this emotion that can lead to action. Contemporary art is more powerful and meaningful when it is connected to a larger social cause, such as the genuine settlement and integration of not only Filipino Canadians, but for all who call Canada home.”
Visitors view the Kapit Bisig Maletas (Link Arms Suitcases)
Members of the Filipino Canadian community were deeply moved as they were empowered with the knowledge that their voices were finally being heard and that “Maleta Stories” affirmed their presence in and contributions to Canada. “We’ve been making our mark here in Toronto and it’s about time that other people recognize who we are as a community. We have to continue and make sure that no Maleta story will be left untold,” said one participant and Magkaisa Centre member.
Singkil Web, representing the Filipino Canadian community's history of migration
While “Maleta Stories” proved to be a huge success and a landmark step towards visibility in the mainstream Canadian cultural collective, the Magkaisa Centre reminds Filipino Canadians that our contributions in struggling for genuine settlement and integration will continue to enrich our roots in our new home.
