In Baltimore, Filipino American artists are finally taking the spotlight

Sitting in her Greenmount West art studio, Thea Canlas can’t help but smile when asked about the moment Filipino American artists in Baltimore are having right now.

“I love it,” Canlas said last week from Area 405, the studios on East Oliver Street.
“I mean, I don’t want to be the only one, right?”

For a group that’s often felt collectively overlooked, that’s not a concern in Charm City today.

Canlas made headlines this summer by winning the Janet and Walter Sondheim Art Prize, along with $30,000, for her thoroughly researched textile installations.

In the same competition, Anna Divinagracia was named a semifinalist for her layered, often photo-driven sculptural objects. Meanwhile, composer and musician Mark Kent Navarro became a finalist for the Baker Artist Awards — another annual competition for the area’s best artists — for the third time since 2023.

What do they all have in common? They’re thriving in Charm City by exploring deeply personal themes like Filipino American identity, assimilation and perseverance through inventive, thoroughly considered pieces of art.

In turn, they’re making the region’s arts scene, and beyond, take closer notice of a vibrant culture.

“It’s an incredibly exciting moment for any historically underrecognized group to be recognized in these institutional spaces and also so supported by their local communities,” said Dylan K. Hill, a contemporary art curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

And it goes beyond awards: Baltimore’s Ralph Bernabe, who moved to America from the Philippines at 13, performs charming indie-pop as Plant Dad, while Tara Cariaso has made a name for herself as a queer theater artist, directing plays and crafting striking masks for the stage.

Earlier this month — fittingly Filipino American History Month — I caught up with Canlas, Divinagracia and Navarro to hear how they use their art practices to better understand themselves and their heritage’s worth.

Thea Canlas

When Thea Canlas learned she was moving from the Philippines to America, she was ecstatic. The pre-teen was already enamored with “Baywatch” and other Western pop culture that had made its way east.

“It was exciting,” Canlas, now 43, recalled. “It was a privilege.”

Did reality match up with her fantasy? Canlas burst out laughing at the question.

“Let’s just say all the work has been reckoning with all of it,” she said. “It’s like, why did I grow up thinking all of this was of less value?”

She’s unpacking this question, and much more, through “Value Studies,” an ongoing series that reimagines items like overseas Filipino workers’ uniforms, detailed with pearls and human teeth, and flags made from Filipino textiles to explore the effects of colonialism and global capitalism on the Southeast Asian country.

Canlas has found a rush of success through her thoughtful work, having made the transition from marketer to artist just during the pandemic.

The former Walters Art Museum employee returned to the Mount Vernon institution in August to receive the annual Sondheim Art Prize, one of the top awards for visual artists in the region. Jurors look to award contemporary artists “on the cusp of making a leap in their work,” according to Create Baltimore, which presents the Sondheim with the Walters.

Canlas is still processing the full-circle win.

“It was very weird. Surreal,” said Canlas, a Maryland Institute College of Art graduate.

Next year will be focused on recharging and working on a Baltimore exhibition for 2028, she said, with plans to visit the Philippines to buy materials and learn how to basketweave for future work.

It’s a time to take stock of her accomplishment, but Canlas plans to only dig deeper into her art in order to better understand her place in the world. “I’m barely scratching the surface,” she said.

Anna Divinagracia

At age 12, it didn’t take Anna Divinagracia long to realize that her new home of Baltimore was a far, far cry from her native Davao City in the southern Philippines.

Food servings. Interstate highways. Clothes. “Everything is just bigger in America,” Divinagracia said recently.

Divinagracia first turned to photography to help make sense of her new reality. But these days she creates rich three-dimensional works, often using materials both familiar — wood, photographs of Baltimore and the Philippines — and unexpected, such as documents from the green card application process.

The latter, “A Game of Dreams,” reimagines Pabitin, a traditional Filipino game similar to a piñata. Instead of candy or toys, she tied dollar bills and “Welcome to the United States” pamphlets to barbed wire.

“I was thinking about what made me want to stay here,” Divina said.

She was used to telling other people’s stories through photos. The switch to these sculptural installations helped the 29-year-old artist, who prefers to go by Divina, realize she had her own story to tell.

“It took an intentional shift around 2020, for me to look internally and think about like, what does my story look like and what would it look like to tell that?” she said.

Her 2025 solo exhibition at Creative Alliance, “Pandarayuhan: Home is a Memory,” offered a tantalizing view of Divina’s narrative. “Mom’s Ref,” a highlight, allowed viewers a peek into her mother’s actual refrigerator, filled with leftovers in tupperware and condiments bought from H-Mart and American grocery stores.

To Divina, who’s “into the idea of people being preserved in the objects that they touch,” it’s a self-portrait of her mother.

“Memory is a fleeting thing for me,” the Morgan State alumna said. “So creating these objects and making magic out of it — imbuing it with them, their spirit — I think, is the art process right now.”

Like Canlas’ work, Divina’s intricate art is best seen in person. Readers can view some of it now in “A Case for the Muse,” a group exhibition at the Compound in East Baltimore on display through Oct. 30.

Mark Kent Navarro

What does home mean to Mark Kent Navarro?

The Filipino American musician and composer returned to the streets that raised him to find out.

For his new album, “Long Live,” Navarro went back to each Baltimore street where he once lived to record whatever sounds he picked up. The field recordings became the catalysts for each track, with Navarro playing every instrument, including piano, guitar and bass.

Growing up in Remington with his sister, Kat, Navarro remembers a sheltered childhood as the only Asian family on their Hampden Avenue block. His mother and grandmother worried about nearby violence.

“I remember when I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to play outside,” Navarro says over dramatic piano notes and a staccato drum pattern early on in the nine-track EP. Recorded sounds of birds chirping and passing cars murmur in the distance, recalling a faint memory.

“Moving between homes is a very big aspect of someone’s life,” Navarro said. “I was just thinking about like, even my family changing their home from the Philippines and coming here and just starting all over again.”

Throughout his life, Navarro and his family moved a lot. They scraped by to put Navarro and Kat through private school. Revisiting these stops on a path to a better life reminded Navarro of “the gravity of that kind of sacrifice.”

“I just have such a deeper appreciation for my family in a way that I should have had this entire time,” said Navarro, who’s also an arts technologist at the Baltimore School for the Arts and regularly collaborates with local theatre company Truepenny Projects.

Count the judges of the Baker Arts Award — another competitive contest for the Baltimore area’s rising artists — among Navarro’s fans. He’s been a finalist in 2023, 2025 and 2026 for the honor, which in April whittled down more than 1,000 portfolios to 36 finalists in visual arts, performing arts, photography and other categories. (Canlas was also a finalist.)

Looking ahead, Navarro is planning a listening party for “Long Live” this winter before its release in January.

The 33-year-old will continue to use his music to untangle the “weird struggle” of often feeling more American than Filipino. He looks forward to developing a stronger connection to his cultural roots.

“It’s really me just trying to figure out who I am,” he said.