Carlo Maghirang: ANITO

LACE is proud to present Carlo Maghirang’s ANITO, a public art installation at LA State Historic Park, on view August 23–September 7, 2025.

Public Programs at L.A. State Historic Park

Saturday, August 23, 1PM, performance by Jobel Medina

Saturday, August 30, 1PM, performance by Anna Luisa Petrisko

Carlo Maghirang conducts a ritual of ancestral veneration through queer self-portraiture in his latest installation entitled ANITO. Each iteration in this sculptural landscape maps varying states of identity through the repetitive making of ‘taotao’ figurines, reimagined as a collection of modular forms that assemble into a lineage of past selves.

The second of Maghirang’s triptych of installations, ANITO follows MA-NA-NANG-GAL (2024), which explored themes on dissection and separation, and builds upon it through the reconstruction and subsequent reconciliation of identity.

Inspired by the same idol he encountered as a child during near-death experience with his grandfather, this collection of figures and the parts that comprise them tells a playful narrative on identity-creation. ANITO is a continuation of a series that remaps his connections to his country through the self, linking memories to spirituality and myth.

ANITO refers to the spirits of ancestors of the indigenous Tagalogs in the Philippines, and the practice of carving figures/idols (called either taotao or likha) to represent them. These idols vary in size and use: some are the size of one’s palms, often kept in makeshift altars and prayed on for health and riches, while others are human scale and used as wayfinding posts or to bless a particular crop/field. Their use has been well-documented since before the colonization of the islands by the Spanish, and are often made with the natural materials found within the creators’ immediate surroundings (such as wood, limestone, coral, and gold). They are imbued with the spirits of the creator’s ancestors through ritual and offerings.

Host or Publisher LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)