In Tagalog, balikbayan refers to someone who returns home to the Philippines, an identity that’s celebrated. A “balikbayan box” is a care package that Filipinos living abroad send back to their families, often containing food, toiletries, and clothes. The tradition was popularized during the ‘70s under the Marcos regime, in which Filipinos living abroad were encouraged to send goods and earnings back to the Philippines to help boost its economy. Today still, many Filipino-Americans send balikbayan boxes back to their families in the Philippines. 

This week, the boxes show up at the new show at the Living Gallery, near the Myrtle-Broadway station, called “Balikbayan: Coming Home to Your Whole Self,” which was put on by the Tsismosas Collective, a group of six Filipina artists that dates to 2022. The group is trying to reclaim the stereotypically negative tsismosa in order to show work that grapples with themes of identity and what it means to return home, whether that is a physical place, the Philippines, or somewhere inside.

Christianne Padilla, a Brooklyn artist, by way of Denver, who is part of the group, had put together an interactive balikbayan box for the show, wrapping it with duct tape just like her mom did when Padilla was a kid.