SOMA Pilipinas is on a mission to bring the streets of downtown SF’s Filipino Cultural Heritage District alive with vibrant color—and soon they’ll unveil the most precious work in their growing collection of public art.
It won’t be the first time the “Ang Lipi ni Lapulapu” mural rises above the neighborhood. It’s been 40 years since artist Johanna Poethig designed the public work of art, the first in the country to celebrate Filipino American immigration. Restoring and updating its faded images decades later brought both her, and the mural’s themes, full circle.
“This is a historical mural, it’s telling a story,” says Poethig. “Filipino Americans, how long they’ve been here and their contribution, is underappreciated. Immigration continues to be a trigger issue, so bringing this story back and focusing a light on it again [is more important than ever].”
Inspired by the traditions of Diego Rivera and the WPA movement, and designed in conversation with the community, the 90-foot tall “Lapulapu” integrates the figures and elements that have had a hand in shaping the Filipino American experience. The mural moves through the centuries, from Indigenous resistance to early European settlement and the galleon trade (which brought luxury goods from Asia to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries), to the agricultural workers and healthcare providers that made their homes here in the 20th century.
Muralist Johanna Poethig works to restore the “Lapulapu” mural 40 years after it first debuted in SOMA.(Courtesy of SOMA Pilipinas)
“I added a veteran to honor those who protested for so many decades to get what they were owed from the U.S. government, and a Lola, a “comfort woman,” from World War II as a sort of elder, not only of the Filipino community but of all of us protesting the violence against women,” says Poethig.
The first Asian American Olympic gold medalist, diver Vicki Manalo Draves, who was raised in SOMA, appears; so…
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