Ashley Dequilla is an artist-filmmaker and archivist who uses painting, performance, moving image, installation, and ritual in her research-based practice. In 2023, she obtained her Masters of Fine Arts in Moving Image from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she is currently enrolled as an MA student in Art History. Ashley holds a BFA in Studio Art and Art History from the College of William and Mary, and a Post-Baccalaureate in Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has screened films and exhibited artwork in Canada, Spain, the Philippines, and across the US. As a community organizer, Ashley works in the realm of gender violence survivor advocacy and Philippine cultural production. She is a Co-Curator Partner of the Philippine Heritage Collection at the Field Museum of Natural History and a member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA). Ashley is the de facto archivist for the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago, working in tandem with Chicago Film Society and the University of Chicago’s South Side Home Movie Project.

Artist Statement

My work is a portal of memory and longing for my homeland, The Philippines. I explore the complication of my origins by synthesizing historiography, memoir, the archive, and futurity. My body and experience are the direct conduits of this potential. Philippine history and identity within the realm of the Western epitome encompass a revolving door of unspeakable horror and resistance. The abject strife of Filipino people parallels the collective global struggle. My work attempts to punctuate displacement, and the diasporic condition by unraveling and elevating subaltern histories. As my body of work questions and engages the violence of the condition of these origins, it joins the discourse of critical transnational feminist resistance that fundamentally aims to question and disrupt the status quo.