It is sadly how humans treat fish as compared with the rest of the animal world. Besides insects and reptiles, fish and marine animals are often looked over, even within the animal welfare community. I'm hoping to contribute to changing this view through my art. 

"Remembering Alf" is a scribble art inspired by Alf, my cat who passed away two years ago. Alf's from-feral-to-family adventure started back in 2012 when I took him in as a kitten and named him Bayn Alfardo "Alf" P. Therpell. 

Alf, a less than a month old tuxedo kitten, was sick and crying for his mother. The building caretaker must have known that I was adopting animals and carried him up the ninth floor for me to discover. After a couple of months of quarantine and medication, he finally recovered and was ready to face the world at 5 months old.

"Mayumi", a name that is relatively used in Japan and the Philippines, is the first entry to my second farmed animal series addressing animal personhood. The series will comprise mainly of minimalist portraits of animals that have been bred to be exploited by the animal agribusiness. The artworks are mostly portraits and caricatures which exclude any representations of captivity. 

Apart from validating their identity, the names assigned to each animal, even though open for interpretation based on their own merits and cultural references, will primarily reflect the animal's personality. Mayumi, in this instance, can mean gentle and demure, as in the Tagalog definition.

In this series, the animals will be seen as people, not as commodities, and that we are here to respect their individual autonomy.  

Animals Are People, Too