Michael Arcega

[9][10][11] Sculpture critic Laura Richard Janku wrote that Arcega "melds myriad aspects of past and present, high and low, humor and horror into the messy melting pot of history, politics and culture.

[30][4] The project centered on his construction of a 10-foot-long replica Spanish galleon out of manila folders and rope, which he launched and sailed in Tomales Bay, referencing the historic Manila-Acapulco trade route and his own Philippines-to-Bay Area journey.

[21][31][32] Critics described the vessel as surprisingly sturdy, "model-airplane intricate and authentic" (with detailed balustrades, cloth sail and tiny Manila-rope rigging), and witty in its fusion of colonial and modern office cultures;[21][31][30] The MCASD show included complimentary objects, such as faux-antique maps, seascapes, coats of arms, and Conquistadorkes I & II, two ornate, life-size suits of armor constructed from manila folders that stood goofily at attention holding hands, deflating the grandiosity of conventional museum displays that glorified war, privilege and conquest.

[6] Arcega's contribution to "Asian American Art Now" was Eternal Salivation (2006), a 15-foot-long, wood replica of Noah's Ark whose hold contained strips of dried meat labeled with the names of birds and beasts rather than the animals themselves.

[19][1][29] Other cultural inversions included Spork (2007)—a tiki-scaled, totem-like sculpture that turned the fast-food flatware into a quasi-religious symbol, alluding to both the cultural-culinary invasions of fast food and the popular carved salad utensils common to Filipino souvenir shops—and Spam/Maps: Oceania, a map of the South Seas islands made from slices of the anagramatic, hybrid foodstuff.

[39][40][5] He documented the voyages—surveying the economic and industrial structure of the US from the Mississippi and Rio Grande rivers, San Francisco Bay, and St John, Louisiana—with photographs, commemorative plates and the canoe itself in his 2012 exhibition at The Luggage Store.

"[2] In his exhibition "Code-Switching" (Al Riwak Art Space, 2013, Bahrain), Arcega extended his geographical reach, examining the constrained social and spatial mobility of transnational and transoceanic migrant labor and the limits of revolutionary activism.

Residue of a Gesture: one side of a non-verbal discussion distilled the modes of communication available to the disenfranchised in a readymade sculpture of an aerosol can of spray paint and an unexploded Molotov cocktail; Mothership 2: a proposal conjured futility, using plastic barricades and fences tied with rope to construct an oil tanker-like vessel rendered stuck and unusable by a concrete beam splitting its path.

[44] TNT Traysikel is a street-work collaboration with filmmaker Paolo Asuncion—a customized, traditional Filipino motorbike and covered sidecar, tricked out with sparkly lights, bright pom-poms and a functioning karaoke system.