I’ve never actually met PJ, but I’ve known him for over ten years. Thanks in large part to the microblogging platform, Tumblr, we somehow crossed paths and ended up staying in touch. In my mind, PJ has always been a force to be reckoned with, finding ways to use art to engage with minority communities and the youth. Over the course of our intercontinental interactions through the years, he’s opened my eyes beyond what I thought was art and just through sharing on various platforms, has introduced to me the voices that I needed to hear, but weren’t being shared enough.

PJ Gubatina Policarpio is a museum educator, curator, and community organizer, among other things. He moved to the U.S. in his early teens and has worked in institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Currently, he works on youth-based initiatives at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as the manager of youth development. He has lectured extensively and through his projects, aims towards multicultural dialogues that put intersectional minority communities at the forefront of the conversations.

With Emmy Catedral, PJ also founded the Pilipinx American Library (PAL), “a bi-coastal, mobile, non-circulating library that celebrates print histories and collects narratives by writers, poets, artists, and scholars across the diaspora.” Through PAL, they invoked Al Robles’ sentiment: “We dreamt of a place to gather.” The current global situation, where many have been discouraged to meet and gather has seemingly posed a threat to this idea—at least in a physical sense—and has proven to make this goal a little harder to reach.

But, speaking with PJ over yet another Zoom meeting has opened my eyes to the possibility of connection despite the absence of physical presence, and has encouraged a sense of community that is built across oceans, something that is created through choosing deliberately and meaningfully the voices you want to cut through the noise.

How has the situation affected how you’ve been working? Just from hearing what you’ve been involved in. A lot of it seems collaborative, and engages communities, so I’m wondering how that’s gone for you.
A lot of my work is deeply collaborative, and I’d like to, if I can, work with people I really admire and respect. And the pandemic has for the most part allowed folks to meet without having to travel, so a lot of that has been cut off, but it’s also really helped me to think about narrowing down that I’m personally excited about and inspired by, and think that I’d have a great voice for. And if I don’t say yes to those three things, then I’d rather focus on rest and my wellbeing.

But, also in terms of an approach, I think that it’s really hard to think about so much professionally… you know, “What do I want to have accomplished this year?” “What do I want to curate this year?” “What do I want to work on?” These things, I didn’t actively seek out, they kind of invited me to be a part of, but you know, I’m not kind of in that zone of being productive all the time.

Last year, a few moments right after the outbreak, I was asked to kind of write and reflect how this has influenced my curatorial practice. And I said, I’m not really thinking about all of these things. I was worried about the impact that the pandemic had, disproportionately, on Black and brown communities, marginalized communities… Anti-Asian racism was really happening, and at the same time, Filipinx and healthcare workers were at the frontlines of this work, and they were more susceptible to this virus. Just looking at where the outbreaks were happening, one of them was a neighborhood that I used to live in in New York, Woodside. It’s a working class, migrant, immigrant neighborhood.

There’s a hospital there—there’s a Jollibee there, if that helps you visualize. It’s the epicenter of Filipino-American life. That’s where you go to get your Filipino grocery, to get your boxes shipped. There’s a Goldilocks, a Red Ribbon, and that was badly hit. That’s where people were dying in numbers, and so, I was like… I can’t think about art! I can’t think about curating. I can’t think about which artist is really interesting right now. I really couldn’t think in that sphere. And I really was in a more personal way, attached to that neighborhood and what it taught me, and kind of that ethos of that neighborhood.

Seeing this place that you love kind of be destroyed by this virus and nobody seeming to care. On top of that, there’s anti-Asian racism, so that was a priority. I took my time. I can’t force myself to be like, “Oh, there has to be a show about coronavirus!” Or you know, who’s making interesting art about the virus.

So it put things in perspective, and showed me what’s more important. So that’s why those projects—especially the Carlos Villa project… it felt really important to share his voice. Because he was so community-driven. He was so multicultural.



I do find it interesting that we were talking about the absence or the overhaul of what “community” means and how we can’t actually meet each other right now, and how you’ve gravitated someone who was actively seeking it. There is a tension between that and what we can’t kind of do now, that we can’t really meet.
Yeah, I think in some ways, essentially, we can meet anybody. Like, you’re in London, I’m in San Francisco. We don’t really need to be in the same space, the same country, to connect, and that’s a tremendous opportunity, but also at the same time, you have something to protect. Now that you can meet everybody, do you want to meet everybody? [Laughs]

Yes, the possibility is there, but at the same time, how do you want to take advantage? But, it’s exhausting. I work 30 hours, 40 hours a week, and that’s screen-based. Any more than all of these projects can add more screen time, and that is kind of a part of it.

There’s also the human part. We can’t just look at this in art world terms. I’m very aware; I’ve worked in museums for a very long time, both in New York and San Francisco. I have a lot of artist friends, curator friends, but we can’t always just look at it through that lens. We really have to look at it through a human lens, knowing that people are suffering. People are dying. In a lot of ways, people haven’t mourned. I lost my grandmother last year—my dad’s mom. Not through the virus, but there’s still this inability to mourn together and be together. I think all of those things taught me to center people in my curatorial practice, in my teaching practice, in all my ways of working. Just to be human.

You sent me links to the Southern Exposure project and the Notes for Tomorrow project. Were these made in response to the pandemic? I particularly liked the inclusion of poetry.
I’m part of Southern Exposure’s curatorial committee, so when the city said that, because of the restrictions, there’s no public gatherings, we came up with what we thought would be an appropriate response from the gallery, which is an on-site gallery. I thought maybe one thing we can do is something that’s more literary.

I also knew that my poet friends were struggling. A lot of them lost a lot of their source of income, so I thought one thing we could do was commission poems. So I invited five folks to create and share poetry that is either in response to or is relevant to the moment, which was last year around September to November.

We shared them in this virtual online exhibition (First Made Into Language), and then it became a real publication. We made it as a riso kind of zine. The poetry is in here, then the images are also here. So the whole exhibition is online, and is this form of like a book publication. This is something I love working in, too. This is essentially an exhibition in a form of a publication.

The ICI project was an invitation. They invited over 30 curators from all over the world in their network, to select something, and I suggested Demian [DinéYazhi’]’s work. I did very minimal work for that. I selected one work and worked with one artist. They have a beautiful design, it’s really great.

The Pilipinx American Library.

There’s so many things that are happening in the U.S. other than the pandemic.
Yeah, over the summer… George Floyd’s death, that brought on a lot of the racial reckoning in the country, and also all over the world. The diasporic Black experiences across the globe, especially with colonialism in Europe and slavery here, and so all of these unanswered questions came up. And so, it was a year that really brought all of this into the foreground.

It’s about time, but it’s also a lot all at once.
It’s a long overdue conversation. But you know, it’s interesting that it’s all at once. It’s the virus, the racism, the economic inequity happening, joblessness, and then also ecological things happening. So, they all decided to come out.

I wonder if it’s because we’re all plugged in, so we’re all aware of what’s happening.
We’re all at home.

Yeah, it’s kind of looking to connect, and like you said, collectively mourn something, or also be enraged by something.
Exactly. How is it over there? How are these conversations happening in London?

I’m really surprised. It’s very diverse, but the U.K. is also still very conservative, but in a “polite” way, kind of.
Brexit was also happening! And conservatism, and anti-immigration.

Yeah, so many things were happening.
It’s so interesting to see diasporic folks, and you’re like, “Oh, we have different issues in the Philippines, but here and in the U.K., there are also different issues.

I guess you’re also updated with the stuff that’s happening back home. Do you still have family there?
My dad’s side, my uncles and aunts and their families. But on my mom’s side, almost all of my cousins are here.

It just feels like a lot to think about all at once and yeaah, I can understand why a lot of people aren’t in the mindset of being productive and doing work. I was going to ask about PAL (Pilpinx American Library). Is that still going on?
Yes! It’s just been on a long pause, just because it’s been, well, you know. Everything is kind of closing down, but also my collaborator, Emmy [Catedral], is in New York. We try to collaborate, but also, we figure there’s many other sources. I’m hopeful that it can kind of emerge again in some way or form. We’re looking to publish a series of texts that we commissioned, so it may come in a book form. Essentially PAL was really made to engage in a gathering setting, in a collaborative, collective setting, and now that that has been discouraged, so we’re just thinking about how that project can exist other than bringing people together in one space. I’m hoping to publish a series of commissioned texts from two years ago, to finally just kind of put it in archive form.

I think archives ebb and flow as needed, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the next version will be or how it will continue, and also, curious.︎

Carina Santos is an artist and writer.