#CIDLoveLetters: Ella Ordona
Artist Bio
Ella Ordona is a multidisciplinary artist, working across several mediums to tell stories. She is interested in the interplay of digital and physical, as well as technology and emotion.
Artist Statement
The first image is a still from a work in progress animation. My parents are first-gen to the US; my siblings and I are 1.5-gen. It's always been revealing to see the progression of memory from my father down to my younger brother. There are moments when we don't understand one another, but food (as always) is the great unifier between us. Family outings were always to House of Hong, where we would do the work of reaching out to each other across language and culture gaps over hot tea and fried rice. Now that my father is gone, I imagine his version of the afterlife has a restaurant like it, which is how this fantasy Chinese restaurant animation was born. The second image is a love letter to my culture. I learned about the Philippines and Filipino-Americans in two waves. The first wave was from my mother, who told me overly romantic origin stories - including one that I’ve never been able to verify about her riding on the back of a kalabaw to deliver a baby in the middle of a typhoon. The second came from an Asian-American history class in college. where I felt ashamed that I didn’t know how deeply embedded Asians are in American history. I learned resiliency from my family first, from their stories and from bearing witness to their own struggles to adapt and thrive in America. I continue to practice resiliency by remembering that the xenophobia and racism is not new, and remembering our rich history will carry us through to the future.
Social Media
Instagram: @ella0