You're a US-based artist making a living off 'indigenous' culture. Baybayin apps, Batok workshops... it all feels like a marketing ploy, sanitizing and commodifying traditions for a Western audience. How is this not just another form of selling out, reducing sacred practices to another product?
I have a direct relationship with practitioners in the Philippines. My family didn't stop being Filipino when they got on a plane. Neither did I. Yeah, I'm based in the US currently, but I have lived in the Philippines. The next obvious criticism will be that I lived in the Metro Manila area. If one feels it's a marketing ploy, it's probably because they're not in the same spaces I've been in, where most of the work gets done. You only see the highlights of it—the end result. And because communication now is done through social media, where algorithms push, reward, and even sensationalize content, yes, it may seem like marketing rather than just storytelling, an update, or accountability.