Eat Gulay

2022-2023 | COMD-400/410; Capstone Project

Eat Gulay is the product of 8 months of research and design. Showcasing the lived experiences of young Filipino/a/x folks in Canada, this book attempts to bring about discussion and highlight the voices of young people within the community.

This project was given an honourable mention for the Glenmore Print + Packaging Award at the Emily Carr’s Graduation Exhibit, ‘The Show 2023’

This project was heavily inspired by my own experiences growing up as a Filipino-Canadian. Since I was young, l found it difficult to learn about and understand my cultural identity. I often felt alone in my struggles grappling my identity as a Filipino and a Canadian, especially when I felt like I didn’t belong to either label. Trying to assimilate while attempting to embrace my heritage was never an easy feat and I often felt like I lacked a sense of belonging.

As I grew older, I gained a strong desire to learn more about Filipino culture and finally come to terms with the never-ending confusion that was my Filipino-Canadian identity. This desire to better understand myself and my culture  led to many Filipino-focussed projects throughout my schooling. Because of this, I knew that for my fourth year capstone project, I wanted to create something that younger me would have wanted- something that allowed Filipino-Canadians to share their experience in hopes of bringing together community.

I probed the concept of what it means to be a Filipino individual within Canada and how aspects of the culture have affected people’s journey in forming and understanding their cultural identity.

I was fortunate enough to speak to Filipino Canadians across Canada and learn about their experiences residing here. They provided me with many insights through their lived experiences and informed the bulk of this project from start to finish. From university students to working professionals, first and second-generation immigrants, friends, and strangers, these conversations allowed me to learn more about the Filipino/a/x Canadian community and what being Filipino means to these individuals.

As one of my first attempts working with the community, two of my close friends and interviewees collaborated with me to create “filipino representation is not inclusive”. This is a zine that expresses our opinions on Filipino representation by providing examples and explanations as a way to organize our strong opinions on this topic. This was inspired by some of my first interviews, as a common topic was representation and what it means for our community. We gave our thoughts to questions such as ‘What is positive representation?’, ‘ What is negative representation?’, ‘ What sort of representation do we have?’, and ‘ How do we go beyond stereotypes?’. This was a way for my friends and I to air out our grievances and have a discussion on something that frustrated us. The illustrations in this zine were provided by Jae while content and editing was done by myself and Julianne.

To further work with the community, I created two activities that focus on allowing individuals within the community to reflect on their relationship/journey with their cultural identity. The first activity I called ‘Imagining Identity’, which was a drawing activity in which participants answered five prompts with any sort of illustration. The drawings could be anything- an object, colour, memory, etc. 

The prompts given to participants were: What does belonging look like to you? What is your earliest memory of living in Canada? How do you define home? What is your favourite thing about Filipino culture? What is your least favourite thing about Filipino culture?




The second activity was called ‘A Letter to...’. In this activity participants were asked to write a letter as a way to further reflect on their relationship with Filipino culture and their cultural identity. The letter could be written to themselves, another person, or a group of people. The content of the letter could be about anything- what the individual feels, their memories, their experiences being in Canada, and so on. Their was also no restriction on language, allowing participants to write in English, Tagalog, or another Filipino dialect.

The name of this project came from an expression my friend’s mother would tell them,  “eat gulay for long buhay”  which translates to “eat vegetables for long life”. I found this expression both amusing and endearing, encapsulating values such as family, care, and kindness, all of which are present in Filipino culture and people.

I created a set of five prints to give to my participants as well as the general public. The prints are illustrations of things in Filipino culture such as food, national symbols, meaningful phrases,  and traditional clothing, with one of the prints relating to the project.

The final publication was the culmination of my 8 months of research and design. From the beginning, I knew I wanted the end result to be something physical I could share with others and keep for myself.

This project allowed me to converse with individuals from across Canada and after listening to their thoughts and experiences. Through their stories, I felt seen and heard. I related to their experiences as well as gained new perspectives. After contemplating the best way to show off these conversations and my research, I landed on creating a book that compiled bits and pieces of my interviews. This was done in an effort to commemorate their experiences and allow others to reflect, relate, and discuss their own lived experiences.