A BOOK by New York-based Filipino arts researcher Kaye Yuvallos, titled This Is How I Hold You From Here / A Companion to A Manual on How to Pack and Send a Balikbayan Box, brings a depth of research into the familiar experience of sending and receiving a balikbayan box.
It tells the story of Tita Lina, a composite character developed from conversations with overseas Filipino workers (OFWS) who have sent balikbayan boxes over the years. It accompanies her larger work, A Manual on How to Pack and Send a Balikbayan Box, which began as an assignment during her MFA in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons and later received The New School’s Student Research Award.
For Ms. Yuvallos, the larger inquiry into the box and the cultural layers embedded in it were best communicated in these formats — as collaborative and performance-based art, resulting in a manual, and finally as a companion book.
“The manual has gone from 70 feet long to 100 plus feet long. The latest version is broaching 130 feet. My goal was really to invite people to share these different ways and methods of packing and sending a balikbayan box, for them to easily access the resource as well as annotate it,” she said in a video interview with BusinessWorld on Oct. 19.
“It was my desire that the book itself wouldn’t speak in an authoritative voice, but in an analogous kind of way that just keeps evolving through community interactions,” she explained. “And what does that say? We’re all kind of figuring out what this all means.”
Coming from various iterations in New York City — most notably at the New York Art Book Fair — the manual and exhibit, now with a brand-new companion book, will continue the conversation in the Philippines, at the Tops ArtFest, which runs from Oct. 22 to 25 in Cebu City.
Ms. Yuvallos’ own experience as part of the Filipino diaspora led her to look at the balikbayan box beyond its practical function as something Filipinos abroad use to send things home. Through the project, she explores the box as “a way of understanding care, contradiction, and the conditions surrounding migration.”
“At grad school, they asked us to look into symbols and performances that were familiar to us and to use that as a starting point to dig deeper. The balikbayan box was a natural landing point,” she said.
Having grown up with the notion of the box and assumptions from the messaging of sacrifice and love that Filipinos know about the migration story, she decided to do her research.
“I saw that 10% of the entire population live outside of the Philippines, and at least 400,000 boxes are sent from all over the world back home each month,” Ms. Yuvallos said. “So, what decisions go into choosing what to pack, into the techniques used in wrapping and securing the box?”
She shared the results of some of the annotation sessions that shaped the manual. There are people who don’t ask their loved ones back home what they want, and simply fill up the box with what they believe to be of value. There are people so inclined to fill every gap that they cut open a sack of rice and dump its contents so that gaps are filled. There are multiple YouTube and TikTok videos online about how to pack a box.
“It hits you that this has been manufactured for so long, with all these extra layers to secure it, so why haven’t we innovated past the same type of cardboard box? Why have Filipinos stayed this way for so long?” said Ms. Yuvallos. “This knowledge economy that’s evolved through this diasporic practice is fascinating, because as this ritual progresses, it’s become so real and a part of our cultures.”
Published by Printed Matter in New York, This is How I Hold You From Here contains colorful illustrations inspired by the balikbayan boxes as prepared by the Tita Lina character — but it doesn’t neatly summarize everything that’s in the manual.
“Tita Lina has many layers. She could be just a generous person, or she could be authoritative. She could be concerned or unconcerned; she could miss her family or not miss her family,” Ms. Yuvallos said.
“As a society, we’re inclined to put things into a box. Like, how can you make it simpler? And the tragedy of this piece of work is, you can’t. I wish I could make it simple,” she added. “But the ethos of my work is to reject simplicity and create a space where we can all sit with the discomfort of the complex.”
At the Tops ArtFest in Cebu, the booth will have activations to continue the conversational nature of both the book and manual. There will be a mailbox where people can answer prompts like, “If you were to send a box to someone that you know overseas, what would you put inside it?”
“Once we gather all the responses, we’re planning on a little virtual gathering to talk about some of the answers,” Ms. Yuvallos said. As a Cebuana based in New York, she noted that she’s excited about what will come of the launch in Cebu, and how it will shape discussions around diasporic experiences moving forward.
“Art isn’t a way of tying up loose ends. I think it’s a crucial part of uncovering aspects of the thing that you wouldn’t otherwise know.”
This Is How I Hold You From Here / A Companion to A Manual on How to Pack and Send a Balikbayan Box will be on view and available at Tops ArtFest in Cebu, running from Oct. 22 to 25. — Brontë H. Lacsamana