![Romantic Conceptualism](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6041ae6be7bf1346cc576f34/1615979845226-QV1XT768JQ1690NG1IKV/painting.jpg)
Romantic Conceptualism
This wildness within the city, confirmed my idea of Manila as ‘every decaying and ever re-greening.’ As the writer Nick Joaquin wrote, ‘ the history of Manila can be put in 3 words: challenge and response’. It almost seems as if every problem, every crisis, arises just to prove the aliveness of this city; continually destroyed and continually rebuilt, every decaying and ever re-greening.’
![Diasporic Intimacy and the Balikbayan Box](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6041ae6be7bf1346cc576f34/1615970235633-3DI2RAZ77HKI9QRZMH36/J.Paz02.jpg)
Diasporic Intimacy and the Balikbayan Box
In 1985, the year after my family immigrated to the United States,