About
ARTIST BIO
Sofia Ella Quimbo is a maker and design researcher whose work engages with historiography, postcoloniality, and the limits and possibilities of language.
Her current projects explore how narratives take shape within structures, institutions, and cultures—tracing their evolution, shifts, and transformations rather than treating them as fixed or final—with a focus on the Philippines. She utilizes collage, fiber, puppetry, and publishing to develop counter-narratives and broaden the ways history is articulated, foregrounding silences, absences, and nonlinear readings of history.
She is currently completing her MFA in Communications Design at Pratt Institute. She is also a graduate fellow at the Pratt Center for Community Development and a graduate assistant of Shuyi Cao. Her forthcoming thesis examines the persistence of silences in the history of Martial Law and the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, considering the questions raised by these silences—about how history is structured, what kinds of memory can be recorded, and what forms of knowledge resist containment.
Before moving to New York, she worked in marketing communications. She received a BFA in Visual Communication from the University of the Philippines-Diliman.
Born and raised in Manila, she currently lives between Manila and Brooklyn.
Her current projects explore how narratives take shape within structures, institutions, and cultures—tracing their evolution, shifts, and transformations rather than treating them as fixed or final—with a focus on the Philippines. She utilizes collage, fiber, puppetry, and publishing to develop counter-narratives and broaden the ways history is articulated, foregrounding silences, absences, and nonlinear readings of history.
She is currently completing her MFA in Communications Design at Pratt Institute. She is also a graduate fellow at the Pratt Center for Community Development and a graduate assistant of Shuyi Cao. Her forthcoming thesis examines the persistence of silences in the history of Martial Law and the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, considering the questions raised by these silences—about how history is structured, what kinds of memory can be recorded, and what forms of knowledge resist containment.
Before moving to New York, she worked in marketing communications. She received a BFA in Visual Communication from the University of the Philippines-Diliman.
Born and raised in Manila, she currently lives between Manila and Brooklyn.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I’m most interested in the Whys. I’m less interested in HOW MIGHT WE. I’m always asking WHY MUST WE? Which is weird, because my practice is making-based.
My current preoccupation is history—why it is written, contested, and erased. I’m interested in the mechanics of power that shape why we remember. I look at both the micro—the self and the family in the contemporary—and macro—world-systems shaped over centuries.
My work is not an attempt to recover a singular, lost narrative but rather to expose the fractures, making space for counter-histories and speculative futures.
Through a multidisciplinary approach, I use text, fiber, and performance to examine how memory is produced and disseminated. I’m drawn to alternative methods of recording and retelling—whether through the tactile nature of handmade books, the ephemerality of performance, or the communal aspects of storytelling. My research often leads me to archives, but I’m equally invested in the stories that slip through the cracks, the ones deemed insignificant or inconvenient. Whenever someone says something isn’t worth pursuing, that’s a pretty good indication of the contrary.
I recognize the privilege that has given me access to certain platforms and spaces. My work is an ongoing negotiation with this reality, using my position to challenge structures that perpetuate exclusion and historical amnesia.
I see publishing not just as a means of dissemination but as an act, a performance—an assertion of presence in the face of erasure.
I strive to make work that unsettles, that asks how we know what we think we know, to trouble the line between what is remembered and what is forgotten, all within a framework that prioritizes care and community.
My current preoccupation is history—why it is written, contested, and erased. I’m interested in the mechanics of power that shape why we remember. I look at both the micro—the self and the family in the contemporary—and macro—world-systems shaped over centuries.
My work is not an attempt to recover a singular, lost narrative but rather to expose the fractures, making space for counter-histories and speculative futures.
Through a multidisciplinary approach, I use text, fiber, and performance to examine how memory is produced and disseminated. I’m drawn to alternative methods of recording and retelling—whether through the tactile nature of handmade books, the ephemerality of performance, or the communal aspects of storytelling. My research often leads me to archives, but I’m equally invested in the stories that slip through the cracks, the ones deemed insignificant or inconvenient. Whenever someone says something isn’t worth pursuing, that’s a pretty good indication of the contrary.
I recognize the privilege that has given me access to certain platforms and spaces. My work is an ongoing negotiation with this reality, using my position to challenge structures that perpetuate exclusion and historical amnesia.
I see publishing not just as a means of dissemination but as an act, a performance—an assertion of presence in the face of erasure.
I strive to make work that unsettles, that asks how we know what we think we know, to trouble the line between what is remembered and what is forgotten, all within a framework that prioritizes care and community.