Ashley Cagauan

‘An Ode to Our Calamansi Tree’ focuses on the native Filipino Calamansi citrus grown in the artist’s family’s garden on Dharawal Land as a poignant symbol of placemaking and the migrant family’s nostalgia for a land that they had left behind. Using the calamansi tree’s leaves and fruit as both subject and medium, this work creates a multi-sensory space through botanical dyeing and scent to engage with memory, cultural narratives, and belonging. The calamansi, often grown in domestic gardens in the Philippines for Filipino cooking, serves as a reminder of heritage and identity, reflecting an intimate space of cross-cultural pollination, transition, and the longing for a previous home – albeit an imaginary home formed by memory, storytelling, emotional attachments, and cultural practices.
The work becomes a symbol of the physical and metaphorical ‘transplantation’ of the diasporic subject, expressing a desire to reclaim a home and a culture lost through migration and to come to terms with existing outside the homeland to which one belongs. This work reflects on the concepts of ‘uprootings’ and ‘regroundings’ in response to the artist’s own placemaking whilst navigating her ethnic and cultural identity both inside and outside of her ancestral homeland.