381 is the number of years that the Philippines was under colonial rule: 333 years under the Spanish and 48 years under the United States. During Spanish occupation, the diverse indigenous groups across the archipelago, once connected by trade and culture, were homogenized under the name “Filipino,” after King Philip of Spain.

Not even 100 years into the independence of the Philippines from various colonial powers, Leanne Barazan moved at age eight from the ‘Pearl of the Orient Seas’ to New York City. In her words: “Although I carry in me— and in my home — the history and teachings of my ancestors, the world outside was suddenly something I had to learn to call mine as well.”

Using textiles and traditional fashion from the Philippines, Barazan envisions the feeling of missing her connection to her mother culture— the dissonance of cultural displacement. The figures in her work, obscured behind sheer curtain or frosted glass, become lingering ghosts—echoes of a heritage that is neither wholly present nor entirely lost.