Alpha Mae Manabat

Email: ammnabat@gmail.com

Instagram: @stysbborn

A Philippine-born, New York based new media ​artist, Alpha Mae Manabat continues to explore ​storytelling, visual language of poetry, languages, ​sounds, films, music, movements, architecture, ​and literature that give way to understanding the ​human condition in relation to ourselves and ​others.

Press

UMSV. “Studio Art Student Assists Las Vegas-Based Contemporary Artist for Two National Museum Solo-Exhibitions on View this Fall.” UMSV Public Relations, October 2023.

UMSV. “Division of Communication, Art, and Media Multimedia Performance Showcase Took the Stage.” UMSV Public Relations, November 2023.

Photo Credit: Sirin Samman

For Lolita, 2023

A 20-minute performance inspired by the life and interview I had of my maternal grandmother. I want to give color to some parts of her life that represent her motherhood, womanhood, and as a human being. It consists of six episodic interpretations from her birth to the death of her husband. Each episode asks a question that points out the emotions and relationships we all have experienced at some point in our lives.

Photos Credit: Sirin Samman

Videos Credit: Laura Perdrizet

Location: Cahill Theater of Mount Saint Vincent University

Truncated by the Air, 2023

This experimental film started with the idea of how I always hear and see my grandmother in everything I do. What does being a woman mean? This is an ongoing translation of a different language to another language that travels through the feelings of different colors, lines, time, and space that embraces her as a human being with an uncapturable kind of love.

Surging Loss, 2023

Poetry Reading

Photo Credit: Gabrielle Calderon

Location: Cahill Theater of Mount Saint Vincent University

I just want to see you

There are tears in my eyes

Confusion

Maybe I’m just using your name to feel sadness,

to feel permitted to feel

I wanna hug you.

I wanna feel your heat and bones seeping through my clothes, maybe they’ll remember it-

even the seconds that the magnolia blooms will transport into this desire I feel right now

Is this dangerous? To want to feel comforted?

Is it the ripened petals that throws itself out?

A suicide.

A soundless death, flying around randomly from the figs of the trees

to the fresh cut grass

I prefer the smell of dead flowers all around me

but inside I’m too conscious of the bee sting in each corner I turn around

Is it the softer pink petals rotting on the sidewalks and hydrating the concrete from this warm weather?

Maybe the briefness and fragility of them are what make me miss you right now

Will you come If I call out your name in this poem?

Familial Love, 2021

Stone Sculpture