Mitch Alcantara (she/they) is a neurodivergent, Filipino researcher, artist, and poet. She believes that art is an act of loving kindness—a means and a space to hold humanity and its every dialectic. Their work can be found in SRHM’s Poetry for Sexual and Reproductive Justice Journal, Tokyo Poetry Journal, and 34th Parallel Magazine. She’s a graduate of the 2023 Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program and is self-taught in the ways of visual art. She’s currently taking up her second masters degree in social work at the University of Melbourne.
Artist’s Statement:
Anito is one of the pieces in my acrylic painting collection called Folklore. It is an exploration of art as artifact, as testament to and documentation of fading Filipino stories—both lost and lingering in the rapid revolutions of language. I am drawn to painting because of its ability to extend the tongue when it fails to articulate. Suddenly, there arises image and sentiment, icons buzzing into a throbbing heartbeat. For me, painting is a somatic, embodied act. I paint to become one with body so that body can say what it opts to say outside the politics of semiotics. I painted Anito during one of my Safe and Sound Protocol Therapy sessions. It allowed my body to come to terms with my existential anguish over postcolonial wounds.
