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IT’S hard to miss Jenifer Wofford’s creations. Just along Market Street in San Francisco, you’d see posters about a woman named Flor Villanueva, a Filipina nurse who emigrated from Manila to the United States in 1973.
"At the time I applied for the Market Street public arts project in 2008, I had been working with the Filipina nurse as a subject in my art for a couple of years," Wofford said and continued, "Since the Market Street project was the perfect opportunity to deepen the work I’d already been doing, by creating a story around a young Filipina nurse, newly emigrated to San Francisco. I constructed a fictional character and narrative around actual historical events in the US and the Philippines in the 1970s."
But there is more to Wofford’s work that sets her apart from most artists. Hers conveys information, feelings and unpretentious humor. It also speaks out to many, as well as makes those who view her art, think.
Born in San Francisco to a Caucausian-American father and a half-Filipina mother, Jenifer grew up in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. She moved back to California for high school and received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1995, and her MFA from UC Berkeley in 2007. Her work has been exhibited in the Bay Area at the Richmond Art Center, a.o.v, Babilonia 1808, Southern Exposure, Intersection for the Arts, Dorothy Weiss Gallery, nationally at New Image Art (Los Angeles), the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum (Salt Lake City), the Philippine Consulate (Honolulu), and internationally at Future Prospects (Manila, Philippines), and Galerie Blanche (Mandelieu-La Napoule, France). Jenifer has undertaken artist residencies at
The Living Room, Malate, Metro Manila, Philippines, Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, New York, and Chateau de la Napoule, Mandelieu-La Napoule, France. Awards include a 2006 Murphy/Cadogan Fellowship. She’s worked in arts education since 1993, via such organizations as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Southern Exposure, San Francisco Conservation Corps, Casa De Los Jovenes, Leadership High School, Galileo High School, the b.a.y. fund, and Out Of Site.
Wofford has also been part of the brilliant artist team known as the Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. M.O.B. is a fun and whimsical look on their Filipina identities she said. They have produced projects for such venues as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the DeYoung Museum, and The San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. "I’ve collaborated with Reanne Estrada and Eliza Barrios since 1996, on very fun, performative, over-the-top, photo, video and installation projects," she said about M.O.B. "I think when we were younger, it was a way of ‘trying on’ our Filipina identities, as a kind of ‘drag:’ we were trying to understand our mothers, and our roles as pinays, in the only way that made sense to us—through humor. Since then, Wofford said that they ideas became more political—but ridiculous as ever.
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