By Ricky Fernandez
AUCKLAND – Filipino-New Zealand artist Louie Bretaña is set to present Eat My Rice at the Viaduct Events Centre on Friday, May 2, 2025. The performance invites audiences to suspend Euro-colonial dining practices and engage with Filipino food culture in its authentic form—eating with their hands on banana leaves.
Louie Bretaña, who moved to New Zealand in 2011 after a career in Philippine advertising, draws on his roots in Manila and Iloilo to challenge colonial narratives. He was awarded Outstanding Filipino-Kiwi Artist 2024, and has continued to make waves in the Aotearoa art scene ever since.
More than a culinary experience, Eat My Rice is part of a wider body of work examining the layers of Filipino identity erased or reshaped by centuries of colonisation. Bretaña’s sculptures often reimagine precolonial deities, such as Lakambakod, the guardian of the rice fields, inspired by the ancestral bulul figures of the Ifugao people.
“Colonialism is so deeply embedded into our society that we grow up with an internalised colonial mentality,” Bretaña said. “We grow up thinking everything white is good, all things brown are inferior.”
The ‘Eat My Rice’ performance invites attendees to reflect on how even basic acts—such as eating—were reshaped under colonial rule. “The Spanish decided that eating with your hands was a ‘savage’ act,” Bretaña noted. “Even the very basic function of eating can be colonised.”
“Food is a person’s investment of time, emotions and memories,” Bretaña explains. “It’s the story of a person as much as it is about a country, a culture, a people.”
Although critical of lingering colonial mindsets, Bretaña sees glimmers of hope. “There is an awakening amongst Filipinos—a renewed appreciation for our original culture,” he said.
In Eat My Rice, audiences are encouraged to engage respectfully with culture, history, and each other. “It’s the notion of respectful intercultural engagement,” Bretaña explained. “We have to be able to look at another person’s culture and not see what’s wrong with it, but learn from it and give them credit for it.”
Eat My Rice is free to view for all ticket holders of the Aotearoa Art Fair and does not require an RSVP. Louie Bretaña’s booth will be located at G14 at the Viaduct Events Centre.
Louie is part of a Hall of Fame of Overachieving Filipino-Kiwi Heroes in NZ awarded at Auckland’s biggest Filipino event – Philippine Independence Day at Auckland Showgrounds. The 8th Filipino News Filipino-Kiwi Hero Awards 2025 is on June 7th at Auckland Showgrounds from 10am-6pm. Free entry.
https://www.fiestapilipinas.nz
