“When future generations look back to my time, it will probably be similar to how I now think of the past.”

Wang Xizhi
Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion (Lantingji Xu)
353 CE

The Orchid Pavilion, the first of Navarroza’s trilogy of exhibitions, considers the exchanges and acculturations that accompanied the movement of people and objects through the Philippines before and during the centuries of the Manila Galleon trade. It focuses on the country’s pan-Asian heritage and, more specifically, on the longstanding Chinese presence woven into Filipino culture and identity.

Taking literature and poetry as points of departure, Navarroza turns to the Philippines’ layered past, looking beyond its broad strokes—heroes, events, and unified narratives—to the details within them. She approaches history through a sensorial lens, conjuring the atmosphere of Manila as a bustling, cosmopolitan entrepôt where disparate people, languages, objects, and traditions converged.

Among the material traces of these exchanges, few are as ubiquitous as blue-and-white ceramics. Developed in China and present-day Iraq from around the ninth century, they circulated widely across the world. In Ten Thousand Things (Blue and White, Self-Portrait with Promise Piece), Navarroza is surrounded by vessels in a myriad of forms, while carrying their contemporary paper-plate imitations. Their persistence across regions is echoed by fabrics from different cultures in the same hues—Yakan weaves, cotton batik, and lace—bringing together materials whose shared palette belies their disparate origins.