KT Pe Benito. Entries to Faustina (Growing out of colonialism for my grandmother's sake), 2018. Mixed media installation with photography, drawings, prints, collage, and text. Courtesy of the artist.
KT Pe Benito. Entries to Faustina (Growing out of colonialism for my grandmother's sake), 2018. Mixed media installation with photography, drawings, prints, collage, and text. Courtesy of the artist.
KT Pe Benito. Entries to Faustina (Growing out of colonialism for my grandmother's sake), 2018. Mixed media installation with photography, drawings, prints, collage, and text. Courtesy of the artist.
KT Pe Benito. Entries to Faustina (Growing out of colonialism for my grandmother's sake), 2018. Mixed media installation with photography, drawings, prints, collage, and text. Courtesy of the artist.
KT Pe Benito. Entries to Faustina (Growing out of colonialism for my grandmother's sake), 2018. Mixed media installation with photography, drawings, prints, collage, and text. Courtesy of the artist.
KT Pe Benito. Entries to Faustina (Growing out of colonialism for my grandmother's sake), 2018. Mixed media installation with photography, drawings, prints, collage, and text. Courtesy of the artist.
KT Pe Benito
My work for Queens International is a visual display and auditory research into my nonbinary Filipinx diaspora. Most of my work on finding belonging within the diaspora came out of affinity groups based in New York City and the internet. However, I was realizing a lack of my own specificity, my own voice in the conversation.

I initiated the work of building my voice by renewing a dialogue with my dad in order to access our family's oral history and retrace the steps my family took to arrive in the U.S. Reconnecting with my Auntie Caroline, I made it a priority to center Filipinx entanglements with nationality, colonialism, immigration, sickness, queerness, and language through my work.

My research has taken shape on a pegboard: an organizational tool referring to the storage and display of tools, craft, and commerce. For this work specifically, the surface allows for the periodic rearrangement of visual information and objects such as letters, merchandise, and amassed drawings, text, and collages. Even the embedded podcast series is an ongoing representation of diasporic peoples that will expand throughout the duration of the exhibition.
Part of my practice that's not necessarily visible or tangible is my self-care. Maintaining my physical and mental health, going to doctor's appointments, therapy, resting, and being mindful of my surroundings is a part of it. This self-care is fundamental for my performance art and intersects with decolonization as a primary issue and goal within my work. Can you talk about how this practice not only enables you to make your work but also informs it? Can you talk about how this practice not only enables you to make your work but also informs it?
My conception of self-care is informed by "Decolonizing Self Care: Detox Dominator Culture" a resource packet and accompanying workshop led by artists Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin and Danielle Wu. I define a decolonized self-care practice by its ability to fulfill my individual needs and help visualize a futurity for my body and my work so that I can support my community's well-being. The diaspo:radio podcast that's plugged into the installation is informed by Audre Lorde's conception of self-care as self-preservation: "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."1 By holding space for my diasporic peers to map out resources and share experiences, we strengthen our community and individual practices. 1 Mirk, Sarah. "Audre Lorde Thought of Self-Care as an 'Act of Political Warfare.'." Bitch Media, 18 Feb. 2016.
I think of Volumes as a series of amassed physical text marked by time, like a collection of periodicals. I've been creating a "volume" of my own through a series of letters that border on prayers for my Filipina grandmother. Through the span of these letters, I'm able to take my time to build an imaginary around her, to understand her political positions, to hypothesize our shared immigration narrative, idealizations of U.S. assimilation, and how she expects the family lineage to continue with me.

Taking interest in the Pe Benito family line and pursuing this work has been a sign of maturation to my dad and my Auntie who are collectively shaping this project with me. They've acknowledged my capacity to hold difficult conversations around family politics and trust that I can provide emotional labor as they tell their stories. As the family history is passed down to me, I feel I have the responsibility to carry it alongside my own story. I'm processing my relatives' histories to find the ways that they are tied to a multiplicity of cultural and systemic issues that still resonate in my lifetime. I work to shift the narratives of abuse and autonomy to advance a decolonized futurity for a greater diasporic community and for my Filipinx family.
KT Pe Benito (b. 1994, Boston, MA) earned a BFA from Cooper Union (2016), and was a recipient of the Osage Nation Higher Education Scholarship. They have exhibited their work in New York City, including group exhibitions at Flux Factory, Queens, NY (2017) and Long Island City Arts Open, Queens, NY (2017). They have performed at Poe Park, Bronx, NY (2018); Housing Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2018); Final Fantasy Reading Series, Brooklyn, NY (2018); amongst other project spaces and performance venues. They live and work in Long Island City, Queens.
Identity Live Mixing Skylight